I 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


THOMAS  CARLYLE 


1  I  :  r.;' 

..*•••  »  •       •  ' 

••*'  :,  i  ':  >.:;  •'• 

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THOMAS  CARLYLE 


THOMAS  CARLYl  1 


A  STUDY  OF  HIS  LITERARY 
APPRENTICESHIP 

1814-1831 


BY 

WILLIAM  SAVAGE  JOH> 


NEW  HAVEN :  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
LONDON:  HENRY  FROWDE 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY   PRESS 
.    MCMXr 


THOMAS  CARLYLE 


A  STUDY  OF  HIS  LITERARY 
APPRENTICESHIP 

1814-1831 


WILLIAM  SAVAGE  JOHNSON 


NEW  HAVEN :  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
LONDON:  HENRY  FROWDE 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
.     .    MCMXI  ,     JUO 


COPYRIGHT,  1911 

BY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


Printed  from  type.    750  copies.    September,  1911 


PREFACE 

The  following  essay  is  the  result  of  a 
course  in  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  given  first 
at  Yale  University  and  later  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Kansas,  in  which  Sartor  Resartus 
was  used  as  a  text-book.  In  teaching  this 
work  it  became  evident  that  it  could  be 
appreciated  properly  only  when  studied, 
first,  in  relation  to  the  social  and  economic 
conditions  which  produced  it,  and  secondly, 
as  the  culmination  of  a  long  period  of 
reflection  and  experimentation.  One  of  the 
primary  aims  of  the  present  undertaking 
is,  therefore,  to  render  clearer  to  general 
readers  the  meaning  and  origin  of  Sartor. 

In  studying  the  Critical  Essays,  however, 
it  soon  became  clear  that  Carlyle  had  formu- 
lated before  1831  all  of  the  important  doc- 
trines .which  constitute  the  gospel  that  he 
was  to  preach  during  the  next  thirty-five 
years.  The  present  study  will  help  the 
student  of  Carlyle  to  see  where  he  found 
and  how  he  developed  many  of  these  ideas. 

In  arranging  the  materials  for  this  sketch 
I  am  aware  that  perfect  proportion  has  not 


227624 


vi  PREFACE 

been  observed.  The  analysis  of  the  magazine 
literature  of  the  period  in  Part  IV.,  for 
example,  is  perhaps  unduly  expanded.  It 
has  seemed  best  in  such  cases,  where  the 
facts  are  comparatively  unfamiliar,  to  treat 
the  subject  at  greater  length  and  to  con- 
dense the  more  familiar  passages. 

I  wish  to  express  my  thanks  to  Professor 
Selden  L.  Whitcomb  of  the  University  of 
Kansas,  and  to  Professor  John  C.  Adams 
of  Yale  University  for  valuable  suggestions 
and  criticism. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction            ...  1 

I.     Philosophy  and  Religion            .  22 

II.     Theories  of  Poetry          .           .  45 

III.  Spiritual  History             .           .  54 

IV.  The  Times  ....  82 
V.     Sartor  Resartus    .           .           .109 

Conclusion               .           .           .  122 

Bibliographical  Note      .           .  126 


THOMAS  CARLYLE 

INTRODUCTION 

Much  has  been  made  of  Margaret  Car- 
lyle's  statement  that  her  son  was  a  man 
"gey  ill  to  live  wi'."  While  by  no  means  the 
most  important  fact  about  Carlyle,  this 
interesting  bit  of  biographical  gossip  is  not 
without  significance.  It  is  one  indication 
among  many  of  his  constant  state  of  nervous 
irritability  and  high  tension.  Dante  and 
Milton  may  be  adduced  in  further  proof  that 
the  spirit  of  prophecy  and  domestic  felicity 
are  seldom  concomitants.  All  of  these  men 
were  intense,  somewhat  narrow,  and  puritani- 
cal. Carlyle  was  not  infrequently  explosive, 
— in  his  wrath,  in  his  laughter,  in  his  habits 
of  work.  That  this  great  mental  and  emo- 
tional energy  did  not  entirely  dissipate  itself 
is  due  to  another  equally  important  quality, 
a  remarkable  unity  and  concentration  of 
thought  and  purpose.  Carlyle  had  only  a 
few  things  to  say,  but  he  said  them  with 
tremendous  force;  he  was  blind  on  certain 
sides,  but  where  he  saw,  he  saw  with  astound- 


2  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

ing  clearness.  In  fact,  that  which  gives  to 
each  of  his  writings  its  highest  value  is 
a  certain  quality  of  vision,  capable  of  dis- 
cerning in  person,  event,  or  phenomenon  of 
nature  that  which  constitutes  its  spiritual 
center,  in  discovering,  to  use  Carlyle's  own 
phrase,  "the  reality  that  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  appearance.**  Applied  to  the  aspects  of 
physical  nature  this  faculty  leads  to  a  con- 
viction of  the  "Divine  Idea  of  the  World," 
a  belief  that  nature  is  only  "a  transitory 
garment  veiling  the  Eternal  Splendour." 
Applied  to  the  study  of  human  history  it 
results  in  an  absorbing  interest  in  spiritual 
biography  as  contrasted  with  picturesque 
gossip  concerning  the  clothes,  manners  and 
motions  of  the  outward  man,  and  in  an 
attempt  to  determine  the  spiritual  origin 
and  meaning,  the  "dynamics,"  of  historical 
events  or  of  present  society. 

This  natural  intensity  of  gaze  was  further 
reinforced  by  the  gradual  formulation  of  a 
definite  philosophy,  the  product  at  once  of 
German  Transcendentalism  and  his  own  tem- 
perament. Both  the  strength  and  the  limi- 
tation of  Carlyle's  writing  depend  largely 
on  the  constant  application  to  the  subject 


INTRODUCTION  3 

of  his  thought  of  a  profound,  but  limited 
and  somewhat  rigid  philosophy  of  life.  To 
the  reader  of  the  present  day  the  chief  value 
of  his  criticism  lies  not  so  much  in  it*s  eval- 
uation of  the  objects  criticised,  as  in  the 
illustration,  through  their  means,  of  this 
philosophy.  We  go,  for  instance,  to  the 
essay  on  Voltaire,  less  to  learn  something 
definite  about  the  subject  of  the  sketch  than 
to  discover  how  Voltairism  is  interpreted  by 
Carlyle.  Nor  is  the  interest  merely  curious 
or  personal.  Here  two  great  schools  of 
thought  are  brought  into  conflict.  It  is  one 
of  the  many  little  combats  in  a  tremendous 
world  battle  between  gods  and  jotuns. 

Out  of  this  warfare  against  materialism 
and  skepticism  Carlyle  was  to  emerge  in 
later  years  scarred  and  battle-stained.  But 
the  time  of  active  conflict  was  naturally  pre- 
ceded by  a  period  largely  devoted  to  assimi- 
lation and  preparation.  As  all  modern  men 
of  wide  reading  must  be,  Carlyle  was  an 
eclectic,  and  in  his  early  writing  we  con- 
stantly see  him  culling  ideas  wherever  he  can 
find  them  and  appropriating  them  as  his 
own.  He  was  grateful  to  these  masters  of 
his  thought,  and,  whether  men  of  profound 


4  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

genius  like  Goethe  and  Fichte,  or  smaller 
men  like  Tieck  and  Novalis,  he  was  ever 
ready  to  give  them  their  full  due.  In  the 
early  books  and  essays,  therefore,  we  are 
able  to  see  him  in  the  very  process  of  select- 
ing and  arranging  the  component  ideas  of 
his  philosophy.  The  present  essay  is  an 
endeavor  to  render  clearer  the  stages  of  this 
process.  While  not  attempting  an  exhaust- 
ive investigation  of  the  influences  at  work 
on  Carlyle's  mind,  or  the  sources  of  his  ideas 
or  of  his  style,  it  is  hoped  that  this  study 
will  show  more  clearly  than  has  yet  been 
shown  what  were  the  materials  of  thought 
accumulated  before  the  publication  of  Sartor 
Resartus  and  destined  to  furnish  the  solid 
substructure  of  all  his  later  work,  and  how 
this  material  was  taking  an  increasingly 
distinct  shape  as  he  proceeded. 

Carlyle  first  becomes  articulate  for  us  in 
the  year  1814,  when  at  the  age  of  eighteen 
we  find  him  carrying  on  an  active  corre- 
spondence with  a  young  friend,  Robert 
Mitchell  of  Linlithgow.  The  Carlyle  of 
these  early  letters  discloses  himself  as  an  I 
earnest  and  high-minded  young  man,  with 
a  strong^  sense  of  responsibility  and  a  turn 


INTRODUCTION  5 

for  giving  good  advice.  Though  the  letters 
of  these  years  furnish  little  evidence  of 
original  literary  genius,  it  is  clear  that  he 
has  already  made  upon  his  friends  the 
impression  of  personal  power.  His  intense 
earnestness  sometimes  displays  itself  in  a 
vaulting  ambition  to  "make  some  fellows 
stand  to  the  right  and  left,"  and  at  other 
times  in  the  serious  conviction  that  "a  man's 
dignity  in  the  great  system  of  which  he 
forms  a  part  is  exactly  proportional  to  his 
moral  and  intellectual  attainments." 

It  is  well  known  that  much  of  Carlyle's 
early  interest  centered  about  the  study  of 
mathematics.  It  is  perhaps  not  so  clearly 
recognized  that  this  interest  was  not  that 
of  the  prize  mathematician  of  the  college, 
who  delights  in  the  exercise  and  display  of 
mental  acuteness,  but  arose  from  the  serious 
desire  to  pursue  truth  under  whatever  guise 
it  presented  itself.  This  is  clear  both  from 
the  letters  and  from  Wotton  Reinfred.  Car- 
lyle  desires  "to  see  these  truths"  and  "to 
feel  them."  Wotton  devotes  himself  to  the 
study  of  mathematics  until  he  becomes  sat- 
isfied that  it  offers  no  satisfactory  solution 
of  the  mystery  of  life.  It  was  inevitable, 


6  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

therefore,  that  Carlyle  should  turn  from 
mathematics  to  philosophy.  The  first  re- 
corded literary  project  is  an  "essay  upon 
natural  religion,"  and  about  the  same  time 
we  find  him  reading  Voltaire,  "the  most 
impudent,  blaspheming,  libidinous  black- 
guard that  ever  lived,"  Dugald  Stewart, 
Hume,  Gibbon,  and  the  Stoic  philosophers. 

It  was  the  reading  of  Mme.  de  Stael's  Ger- 
many in  September,  1817,  that  led  Carlyle 
to  the  study  of  German  literature.  Six 
months  later  we  find  him  taking  lessons  in 
German,  and  by  1821  he  is  deep  in  Schiller 
and  Kant,  Schelling  and  Fichte.  By  July 
of  the  latter  year  he  has  himself  tasted  of 
"the  magic  cup  of  literature"  and  resolved 
to  "drink  of  it  forever,  though  bitter  in- 
gredients enough  be  mixed  with  the  liquor." 

Of  the  early  literary  projects  the  most 
interesting  belong  to  the  year  1822.  One 
of  these  is  a  "kind  of  essay  on  the  Civil 
Wars  (of)  the  Commonwealth  of  England," 
an  interesting  anticipation  in  its  plan  of  the 
most  striking  features  of  Carlyle's  historical 
method,  according  to  which  the  biography  of 
great  men  is  used  to  interpret  the  truly  typi- 
cal in  national  character,  and  the  whole  is 


INTRODUCTION  7 

used  to  expound  a  personal  philosophy.2  In 
December  he  proposes  to  Miss  Welsh  a  still 
more  interesting  project,  the  writing  of  a 
novel  in  collaboration.  The  hero  was  to  be 
a  disappointed  young  man  of  genius  in  cir- 
cumstances resembling  Carlyle's  own.  "Sick 
of  struggling  along  the  sordid  bustle  of 
existence,  where  he  could  glean  so  little 
enjoyment  but  found  so  much  acute  suffer- 
ing," he  was  to  wander  discontentedly  over 
the  hill  country,  musing  and  meditating  and 
occasionally  delivering  his  opinions  "upon 
many  points  of  science,  literature  and 
morals."  As  his  mental  malady  increased 
he  was  to  speak  forth  his  sufferings  "with  a 
tongue  of  fire — sharp,  sarcastic,  apparently 
unfeeling,  yet  all  the  while  betokening  to  the 
quick-sighted  a  mind  of  lofty  thoughts  and 
generous  affections  smarting  under  the  tor- 
ments of  its  own  over-nobleness,  and  ready 
to  break  in  pieces  by  the  force  of  its  own 
energies."  This  is  the  moment  of  entrance 
for  the  heroine,  that  is,  for  Miss  Welsh, 
who  rescues  him  from  his  state  of  despond- 

a  In  1898  Alexander  Carlyle  edited  a  series  of  Historical 
Sketches,  written  by  Carlyle  about  1842  and  1843,  a  partial 
fulfillment  of  the  plan  outlined  in  1822. 


8  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

ency.  "The  earth  again  grows  green 
beneath  his  feet,  his  soul  recovers  all  its 
fiery  energies,  he  is  prepared  to  front  death 
and  danger,  to  wrestle  with  devils  and  men, 
that  he  may  gain  your  favor.  For  a  while 
you  laugh  at  him,  but  at  length  take  pity 
on  the  poor  fellow,  and  grow  as  serious  as 
he  is.  Then,  oh  then!  what  a  more  than 
elysian  prospect!  But  alas!  Fate,  etc., 
obstacles,  etc.,  etc.  You  are  both  broken- 
hearted, and  die;  and  the  whole  closes  with 
a  mortcloth,  and  Mr.  Trotter  and  a  com- 
pany of  undertakers." 

Although  Carlyle  soon  abandoned  this 
project  ("your  novel-love  has  become  a  per- 
fect drug"),  it  was  destined  to  bud  a  few 
years  later,  frost-nipped  to  be  sure,  in 
Wot  ton  Reinfred,  and  to  come  to  fruition  at 
last  in  the  biographical  portion  of  Sartor 
Resartus.  Of  the  other  writings  before  1826 
all  partake  more  or  less  of  the  nature  of 
hackwork.  Besides  the  encyclopedia  articles 
written  for  Dr.  Brewster,  these  are  the  Life 
of  Schiller,  written  in  1823  and  1824,  the 
translation  of  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister, 
undertaken  about  the  same  time,  and  the 
translations  for  the  volume  of  German 


INTRODUCTION  9 

Romance,  apparently  begun  in  November, 
1825,  and  finished  in  June,  1826.  On  Octo- 
ber 17,  Carlyle  and  Miss  Welsh  were  married 
in  the  bride's  home  in  Templand.  His  period 
of  hackwork  and  his  unmarried  life  ended 
together. 

The  seven  years  from  1819  to  1826  while 
Carlyle  had  been  struggling  to  find  a  place 
for  himself  in  the  field  of  letters  had  been 
in  other  ways  perhaps  the  most  crucial  of 
his  life.     Dyspepsia  and  doubt  had  joined 
forces  to  bring  him  torment,  and  the  first 
three  years  of  this  period  are  those  which  he 
has  described  as  "the  three  most  miserable 
years  of  my  life."     The  famous  conversion 
or   "new   birth"   had   taken   place   in   June, 
1821,   but   the   victory   was   not   completed 
until  1826,  when  "the  final  chaining  down, 
trampling  home  'for  good,'  home  into  their 
caves  for  ever  of  all  my  spiritual  dragons" 
was  at  last  accomplished.     Even  more  dis- 
tressing than  his   religious   doubts  was  the 
lack  of  certainty  as  to  his  own  usefulness. 
"The  thought  that  one's  best  days  are  hurry- 
ing  darkly    and   uselessly    away"    seems   to 
have    been    the    most    grievous    of    all    his 
burdens. 


10  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

In  the  meanwhile  he  is  not  entirely 
absorbed  in  the  internal  struggle.  In  1819 
for  the  first  time  we  find  him  taking  a  lively 
interest  in  social  problems.  The  letters 
from  this  time  on  contain  little  pictures  of 
the  pathos  and  tragedy  in  the  lives  of  the 
poor  and  oppressed  as  they  revealed  them- 
selves to  this  thoughtful  young  Scotchman 
of  a  century  ago,  with  his  hungry  heart, 
his  ready  sympathy  and  no  less  ready  con- 
tempt, and  his  Faustian  thirst  for  a  deeper 
knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  life.  We  see 
him  at  the  time  of  the  Radical  rising  in 
Glasgow  overtaking  an  old  peasant  and 
eagerly  discussing  with  him  the  rights  of 
the  people  and  the  poverty  and  misery  of 
the  working  classes ;  or  visiting  the  iron  and 
coal  works  at  Birmingham  and  expressing 
his  pity  for  grimy  and  naked  humanity 
"plashing  about  among  dripping  caverns, 
or  scrambling  amid  heaps  of  broken  mineral ; 
and  thirsting  unquenchably  for  beer";  or 
turning  into  the  Morgue  at  Paris  to  see  the 
naked  body  of  "an  old  gray-headed  artisan 
whom  misery  had  driven  to  drown  himself  in 
the  river."  The  young  observer  notes  the 
"grim  fixed  look  of  despair,"  the  "lean, 


INTRODUCTION  II 

horny  hands  with  their  long  ragged  nails," 
and  "the  patched  and  soiled  apparel  with 
apron  and  sabots  hanging  at  his  head,"  and, 
already  keenly  alive  to  the  value  of  contrast, 
throws  the  whole  against  the  background  of 
noisy  life  streaming  along  the  Pont  Neuf. 
A  letter  from  London  two  months  later  pre- 
sents a  similarly  striking  picture  of  that 
"enormous  Babel,"  with  its  "coaches  and 
wains  and  sheep  and  oxen  and  wild  people 
rushing  on  with  bellowings  and  shrieks  and 
thundering  din,  as  if  the  earth  in  general 
were  gone  distracted."  There  is  in  all  this 
perhaps  too  preponderant  an  interest  in  the 
strikingly  spectacular,  too  keen  a  desire  to 
throw  the  picture  of  the  gray-headed  artisan 
into  sharp  contrast  with  the  quacking,  sharp- 
ing, racketing  multitude,  too  little  of  that 
yearning  human  compassion  which  makes 
possible  a  Bridge  of  Sighs  or  a  Little  Dorrit. 
There  is,  however,  a  note  of  noble  indignation 
against  wrong  and  oppression,  premonitory 
of  Chartism  and  of  Past  and  Present. 

That  Carlyle's  sense  of  consecration  to  a 
high  purpose  was  growing  in  him  during 
this  period  is  evident  from  the  tone  of  many 
letters.  Carlyle  has  frequently  been  accused 


12  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

of  egoism,  and  he  cannot,  I  think,  be  wholly 
cleared  of  this  charge.  In  spite  of  his  con- 
viction of  the  necessity  of  renunciation  he 
never  really  learned  the  lesson  of  self- 
effacement.  Like  Ruskin,  he  was  filled  with 
wrath  and  disappointment  at  England  for 
paying  so  little  heed  to  his  most  vehement 
warnings.  A  touch  of  spiritual  pride  that 
occasionally  approaches  Pharisaism  now  and 
then  offends  us.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  he  was, 
I  believe,  a  man  of  true  humility  and  true 
sympathy;  and  to  compare  him,  as  a  writer 
has  recently  done,  to  the  Japanese  Thunder- 
god  who  leers  and  lashes  at  humanity  with 
no  real  compassion  for  it  in  his  heart,  is 
grossly  unjust.  Carlyle  began  with  aggres- 
sive egoism,  but  he  soon  realized  that  life 
made  nobler  demands  upon  him  than  those 
of  personal  ambition.  In  February,  1825, 
he  writes  to  Alexander  Carlyle:  "Literary 
fame  is  a  thing  which  I  covet  little;  but  I 
desire  to  be  working  honestly  in  my  day  and 
generation  in  this  business,  which  has  now 
become  my  trade."  "Do  not  imagine,"  he 
writes  to  Miss  Welsh  in  January,  1823, 
"that  I  make  no  account  of  a  glorious  name : 
I  think  it  is  the  best  of  external  rewards, 


INTRODUCTION  13 

but  never  to  be  set  in  competition  with  those 
that  lie  within." 

Finally,  the  letters  written  toward  the 
close  of  this  period  reveal  a  tremendously 
increased  power  of  expression.  The  vision 
is  clearer,  the  penetration  deeper,  the  lan- 
guage more  poetical.  The  man  has  seen 
more  widely,  felt  more  deeply,  lived  more 
earnestly.  Though  he  has  not  yet  gained 
the  power  of  expressing  his  whole  mind  in 
any  completed  work  of  art,  many  letters 
show  that  in  single  passages  he  has  learned 
how  to  bring  all  his  faculties,  pictorial  and 
reflective,  to  bear.  Along  with  this  goes  a 
deepening  of  the  sense  of  mystery.  Even 
in  the  midst  of  hackwork  he  has  begun  to 
voyage  strange  seas  of  thought  alone,  to  see 
in  an  ancient  Scotch  city  the  beauty  of  "a 
city  of  fairy-land,"  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral 
the  solemnity  of  "Tadmor  in  the  wilderness," 
and  to  find  that  a  hidden  mystery  lies  behind 
every  simplest  fact  of  life  and  of  death, 
"could  man  outlook  that  mark." 

Carlyle  began  his  married  life  at  21  Com- 
ley  Bank,  Edinburgh,  where  he  lived  from 
October,  1826,  until  May,  1828.  From  the 
latter  year  until  after  the  publication  of 


14  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Sartor  Resartus  in  1834  his  home  was  the 
lonely  farmhouse  of  Craigenputtock.  The 
period  of  apprenticeship,  however,  may  be 
said  to  have  been  completed  by  the  end  of 
1831.  The  writings  of  these  years  include 
nineteen  of  the  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays,  the  unfinished  novel  of  Wotton 
Reinfred,  and  Sartor  Resartus.  The  more 
important  essays  are  the  two  on  Richter, 
The  State  of  German  Literature,  Burns, 
Goethe,  Voltaire,  Novalis,  Signs  of  the 
Times,  History,  Schiller,  and  Characteris- 
tics.9' None  of  these  can  properly  be  termed 
hackwork.  They  are  written  with  spirit  and 
originality  and  constitute  an  important  part 
of  Carlyle's  literary  output.  In  Sartor  he 
found  for  himself  a  true  medium  of  expres- 
sion, and  with  the  completion  of  this  book 
by  the  middle  of  1831,  and  the  publication 
of  Characteristics  in  the  same  year,  the 
period  of  literary  apprenticeship  has  come 
to  a  close. 

The  novel  of  Wotton  Reinfred  was  begun 
about  the  end  of  January,  1827.b     Its  title 

a  See  Bibliographical  Note. 

b  On   February  3   Carlyle  says,   "Last  week,  too,   I   fairly 
began  ....  a  book." 


INTRODUCTION  15 

is  first  mentioned  in  March  of  the  same  year. 
On  June  4  we  hear  that  "poor  Wotton  has 
prospered  but  indifferently  ....  though 
daily  on  the  anvil,"  and  the  last  passing 
mention  of  it  is  on  February  1,  1828,  at 
which  time  it  had  apparently  not  yet  been 
abandoned.  Mr.  Norton  quotes  from  an 
unpublished  manuscript  of  Carlyle's  written 
in  1869,  to  the  effect  that  "the  work  proved 
to  be  a  dreary  zero,  and  went  wholly  to  the 
fire."  The  seven  completed  chapters  were, 
however,  left  among  Carlyle's  papers  at  his 
death,  and  were  published  by  D.  Appleton  & 
Company  in  1892.  The  story  of  the  publi- 
cation of  Sartor  has  been  told  more  than 
once  and  need  not  be  repeated  here.  Begun 
about  September,  1830,  it  was  finished, 
revised  and  expanded  by  July,  1831,  when 
Carlyle  set  off  for  London  to  find  a  publisher. 
After  its  rejection  it  was  laid  aside  without 
change  in  the  text  until  November,  1833, 
when  it  began  to  appear  in  Fraser's  Maga- 
zine. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  published  reviews 
were  attracting  considerable  attention.  Their 
author  was  beginning  to  be  talked  about  and 
even  to  gather  a  little  band  of  disciples.  He 


16  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

writes  from  Edinburgh  in  1827  that  the 
people  seem  to  think  him  "a  genius  perhaps, 
but  of  what  sort  Heaven  only  knows."  He 
is  regarded  rather  to  his  own  satisfaction  as 
a  mystic.  A  parcel  from  the  Societe  St.- 
Simonienne  in  Paris  after  the  publication  of 
Signs  of  the  Times,  a  conversation  with  a 
certain  Mrs.  Austin,  whom  he  describes  as 
"the  most  enthusiastic  of  German  Mystics," 
and  the  visit  of  "a  young  man,  Coke,  from 
Norwich,"  the  bearer  of  a  letter  from  a  little 
band  of  "Disciplekins,"  are  small  encourage- 
ments. Three  months  later  Mill  introduces 
him  to  a  "fresh  lot  of  youths"  who  seek  his 
acquaintance. 

All  this  impresses  more  and  more  upon 
him  the  readiness  and  necessity  for  adminis- 
tering some  sort  of  "medicinal  assafoetida" 
to  the  "pudding-stomach  of  England." 
Much  jangling  concerning  that  "everlasting 
'Catholic  question' "  and  the  Reform  Bill 
reaches  his  ears  even  at  Craigenputtock,  but 
sounds  somewhat  vain  there.  To  one  whose 
"Seed-field  is  Time"  the  proper  relation 
toward  all  this  seems  "that  chiefly  of  Specta- 
tor."3 Nevertheless,  he  is  not  indifferent  to 

a  Letter  to  Dr.  Carlyle,  June  6,  1831. 


INTRODUCTION  17 

the  actual  state  of  English  society  in  his  own 
day.  His  Journal  for  February,  1829, 
records  his  desire  above  all  things  to  know 
England  and  "the  essence  of  the  social  life" 
there,  and  the  jottings  of  this  and  the  fol- 
lowing year  contain  many  reflections  on 
social  questions.*  He  is,  in  fact,  interested 
in  all  that  pertains  to  the  life  of  his  time, 
but  it  is  rather  the  inner  than  the  outer  man 
with  whom  he  is  concerned.  The  "Mechan- 
ism" of  Whigs,  and  Lord  Advocates,  and 
"unspeakably  gabbling  Parliamenteers  and 
Pulpiteers"  offends  him:  "one  spark  of 
Dynamism,  of  Inspiration,  were  it  in  the 
poorest  soul,  is  stronger  than  they  all" 
( Craigenputtock,  March  4,  1831).  He  is 
resolved  that  he  at  least  shall  sit  no  longer 
"mute  as  milestone,  while  Quacks  of  every 
description  are  quacking  as  with  lungs  of 
brass,"  even  though  "poor  Teufelsdreck" 
stands  unsupported  in  such  resistance. 
After  the  failure  to  get  Sartor  printed,  he 
contemplates  for  a  while  the  possibility  of 
lecturing  to  "this  benighted  multitude," 

a  The  extracts  of  the  journal  of  1829-1830,  which  form 
Chapter  4  of  Froude's  second  volume,  contain  many  passages 
afterwards  incorporated  with  changes  in  Sartor  Resartus. 


18  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

whose  "gross  groping  ignorance"  is  becom- 
ing more  and  more  evident  to  him. 

Carlyle's  spiritual  condition  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  period  and  his  fitness  to  deliver 
a  message  of  affirmation  are  indicated  in  a 
letter  to  Goethe  (August  20,  1827)  : 

"As  it  is,  your  works  have  been  a  mirror 
to  me;  unasked  and  unhoped  for,  your 
wisdom  has  counselled  me ;  and  so  peace  and 
health  of  soul  have  visited  me  from  afar. 

/For  I  was  once  an  Unbeliever,  not  in  Reli- 
gion only,  but  in  all  the  Mercy  and  Beauty 
of  which  it  is  the  symbol;  storm-tossed  in 
my  own  imaginations ;  a  man  divided  from 
men;  exasperated,  wretched,  driven  almost 
to  despair ;  so  that  Faust's  wild  curse  seemed 
the  only  fit  greeting  for  human  life;  and  his 
passionate  Fluch  vor  alien  der  Geduld!  was 
spoken  from  my  very  inmost  heart.  But 
now,  thank  Heaven,  all  this  is  altered;  with- 
out change  of  external  circumstances,  solely 
by  the  new  light  which  rose  upon  me,  I 
attained  to  new  thoughts,  and  a  composure 
which  I  should  have  once  considered  as 
impossible.  And  now,  under  happier  omens, 
though  the  bodily  health  which  I  lost  in 
these  struggles  has  never  been  and  may 


INTRODUCTION  19 

never  be  restored  to  me,  I  look  forward  with 
cheerfulness  to  a  life  spent  in  Literature, 
with  such  fortune  and  such  strength  as  may 
be  granted  me;  hoping  little  and  fearing 
little  from  the  world;  having  learned  that 
what  I  once  called  Happiness  is  not  only  not 
to  be  attained  on  Earth,  but  not  even  to  be 
desired." 

The  conviction  that  "the  root  of  bitter- 
ness in  the  bottom  of  our  cup"  cannot  be 
removed  had  slowly  forced  itself  upon  him 
and  had  now  become  an  integral  part  of  his 
philosophy.  "Happy  he  who  learns  to  drink 
it  without  wincing!"  he  says  in  a  letter  to 
Alexander  Carlyle,  written  in  January,  1827. 
"Happier  and  wiser  who  can  see  that  in  this 
very  bitterness  there  is  a  medicine  for  his 
Soul."  The  renunciation  of  happiness 
demands  either  resignation  or  revolt  and 
bitterness  of  spirit.  Carlyle  chose  the 
former.  "Humility  is  no  mean  feeling,  but 
the  highest,  and  only  one;  the  denial  of  Self 
it  is,  and  therein  is  the  beginning  of  all  that 
is  truly  generous  and  noble"  (January, 
1831 ) .  "He  who  has  seen  into  the  high  mean- 
ing of  'ENTSAGEN/  "  he  writes  to  Goethe, 
"cherishes  even  here  a  still  Faith  in  quite 


20  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

another    Future    than    the    vulgar    devotee 
believes,  or  the  vulgar  sceptic  denies." 

To  believe  in  the  goodness  of  life,  yet  to 
disbelieve  in  the  possibility  of  earthly  happi- 
ness, is  in  itself  a  high  act  of  faith.  With 
Carlyle  it  was  based  upon  the  belief  that 
"Life  is  but  a  Shadow  and  a  Show,"  and  that 
"the  Substance  and  the  Truth  lies  beyond 
it."  More  and  more  the  actual  world  about 
him  was  coming  to  seem  to  him  spectral  and 
unreal.  "Man  walks  on  the  very  brink  of 
unfathomable  abysses  always,"  he  writes  to 
his  brother  John,  and  to  his  mother:  "This 
mad  Existence  ....  I  look  upon  rather  as 
a  heavy  Dream,  wherefrom,  when  the  night 
is  passed,  we  shall  awaken  to  a  fair  Morn- 
ing." The  disregard  of  fame  and  worldly 
ambition,  and  "the  search  and  declaration" 
of  the  invisible  truth,  the  honest  striving 
"after  the  Idea,"  is  from  this  time  on  to 
become  his  steadfast  purpose.  Diligence, 
"like  the  stars  unhasting,  unresting,"4  the 
pursuit  of  Truth,  recognized  as  priceless,  and 
the  avoidance  of  Dilettanteism,  the  endeavor 
to  make  of  oneself  a  man,  and  not  only 
"another  money- gaining  and  money-spend- 

a  Goethe's  "ohne  Hast,   aber  ohne   Rast." 


INTRODUCTION  21 

ing  machine,"  these  are  the  counsels  that  he 
is  giving  to  others  and  striving  himself  to 
follow.*  "Not  the  quantity  of  Pleasure  we 
have  had,  but  the  quantity  of  Victory  we 
have  gained,  of  Labor  we  have  overcome: 
that  is  the  happiness  of  Life." 

a  See  the  letter  to  Mr.  Henry  Inglis,  March  31,  1829. 


I 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION 

To  make  anything  like  a  complete  expo- 
sition of  Carlyle's  philosophy  would  lead  us 
far  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  present  under- 
taking. Besides,  it  has  been  done,  or  at 
least  been  attempted  with  greater  or  less 
success,  not  once  but  several  times.a  It  is 
our  purpose  here  merely  to  sketch  rapidly 
the  successive  appearances  of  his  more  impor- 
tant philosophical  tenets. 

Carlyle's  first  mention  of  Kant  in  the 
letters  is  in  1820.  He  began  reading  the 
transcendental  philosophers  soon  after.  In 
1825,  at  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  the 
Schiller,  he  was  looking  to  them  with  hope, 
though  without  any  extravagant  expecta- 
tions, for  that  solution  of  the  mystery  of 
life  for  which  his  whole  soul  ardently  longed. 
"The  Philosophy  of  Kant  is  probably  com- 
bined *with  errors  to  its  very  core;  but  per- 
haps also,  this  ponderous,  unmanageable 

a  See,  for  instance,   The  Philosophy  of  Carlyle,  by  Edwin 
D.   Mead,   Boston,    1881. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      23 

• 

dross  may  bear  in  it  the  everlasting  gold  of 
truth."  By  this  time  he  had  already  parted 
with  a  belief  in  orthodox  Christianity,  he  had 
decided  against  the  possibility  of  miraculous 
interference  with  the  laws  of  nature,  but 
his  reverent  and  enthusiastic  temperament 
demanded  some  expression  in  religious  belief. 
The  grounds  for  such  faith  he  had  been 
unable  to  find  in  the  English  and  Scotch 
philosophers.  He  had  toiled  conscientiously 
over  Dugald  Stewart,  and  had  read  eagerly 
the  works  of  Locke  and  Hume.  But  the 
lack  of  clear  penetration  in  the  one,  and  the 
materialism  and  skepticism  of  the  other  two 
offended  him.  The  Germans,  on  the  other 
hand,  seemed  to  hold  the  key  to  the  situation, 
at  any  rate  they  seemed  to  approach  the 
problem  from  the  right  direction. \That  all 
phenomena,  when  traced  far  enougn^end  in 
mystery,  is  indisputable.  '/'That  this  myste- 
rious life  is  spiritual  rather  than  mechanical 
in  its  origin  and  its  essence,  is  at  least 
impossible  to  disprove.  NtThat  not  merely 
occasional,  but  that  an  phenomena,  are 
accordingly  to  be  looked  upon  as  miraculous 
in  the  sense  that  they  are  mysterious,  inex- 
plicable, and  worthy  of  reverence,  is  a 


24  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

justifiable  and  even  lofty  doctrine.  These 
are  the  chief  tenets  which  Carlyle  found 
expressed  for  him  in  German  Transcenden- 
talism, and  which  accordingly  he  appro- 
priated as  his  own.  7 

That  none  of  £Kefce  fundamental  beliefs  or 
habits  of  mind  is  new,  that  they  are  all  to  be 
found,  for  instance,  in  the  book  of  Job,  does 
not  make  Carlyle's  debt  to  the  Germans  the 
less.  What  Transcendentalism  did  for  him 
was  to  persuade  him  that  these  beliefs  are 
still  reasonable  to  a  modern  man,  that  they 
are  not  inconsistent  with  the  latest  discov- 
eries of  science,  and  that  they  may  be 
deduced  by  the  most  strict  and  logical 
methods  known  to  the  best  equipped  modern 
mind.  In  other  words,  Kant  translated  the 
language  of  the  Bible  and  of  Plato  into  the 
modern  tongue. 

In  the  first  essay  on  Richter  this  phil- 
osophy, as  modified  by  the  individual  mind 
of  the  novelist,  is  just  mentioned.  Richter's 
philosophy  is  deemed  noteworthy  in  that  it 
is  not  mechanical  or  skeptical,  that  in  spite 
of  disregard  of  dogma  and  apparent  irrever- 
ence it  is  at  bottom  profoundly  reverent  and 
religious ;  that  it  clings  fast  to  faith  in  man's 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      25 

immortality  and  native  grandeur,  and  that 
this  faith  is  joined  with  that  love  of  truth 
which  leads  through  doubt  and  denial  before 
it  reaches  affirmation.  This  is  the  only  sort 
of  faith  possible  to  the  noble  modern  mind.  / 

Carlyle's  first  attempt  to  present  in  any 
adequate  way  the  more  important  conclu- 
sions of  the  transcendentalists  occurs  in  the 
essay  on  The  State  of  German  Literature. 
The  Germans  have  been  accused  of  mysti- 
cism. It  is  in  answer  to  this  charge  that 
Carlyle  examines  the  philosophy  which  has 
so  profoundly  influenced  both  their  formal 
thought  and  their  imaginative  literature. 
The  charge  of  mysticism  arises,  he  believes, 
either  from  the  inability  of  the  reader  to 
follow  abstract  discussion  which  cannot  be 
set  forth  through  the  use  of  ordinary  sym- 
bols, or  from  the  inability  of  the  writer, 
"seized  by  some  touch  of  divine  Truth,"  to 
convey  his  meaning  through  the  rude  sym- 
bols at  his  command.  Of  mysticism  in  the 
latter  sense  Kant  with  his  strong,  clear 
quality  of  vision  cannot  justly  be  accused. 

Carlyle  does  not  pretend  to  have  mastered 
the  philosophy  which  he  here  partially 
expounds.  He  still  professes  to  be  only  an 


26  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

inquirer  on  the  outskirts  of  the  matter,  but 
zealous  to  prove  to  Englishmen  that  there  is 
matter  worthy  of  investigation.  It  can 
hardly  be  said  that  he  ever  became  much 
more  than  this.  He  seized  upon  those  doc- 
trines which  naturally  appealed  to  his  own 
type  of  mind  and  gave  them  prominence. 

Of  these  he  selects  in  this  place  two  of 
primary  importance.  They  are,  first :  that 
Primitive  Truth,  the  assumption  upon  which 
philosophy  must  build,  is  not  to  be  found  in 
the  experience  of  sense,  but  through  the 
faculty  of  intuition,  "in  the  deepest  and 
purest  nature  of  Man."  God,  Virtue,  the 
Soul,  are  not  to  be  proved  but  to  be  assumed, 
for  no  other  truth  is  so  primitive  or  so  cer- 
tain. "To  open  the  inward  eye  to  the  sight 
of  this  Primitively  True,"  which,  when 
rightly  discerned,  will  need  no  further  proof, 
is  then  the  true  task  of  philosophy. 

The  second  doctrine  asserts  the  existence 
of  a  special  faculty  by  which  this  Primitive 
Truth  may  be  discerned.  The  distinction 
between  the  Understanding  and  the  Reason 
(V  erst  and  and  Vermvnft)  Carlyle  calls  "the 
grand  characteristic  of  Kant's  philosophy." 
Both  Understanding  and  Reason  are  organs, 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      27 

or  modes  of  operation,  by  which  the  mind 
discovers  truth.  Reason,  however,  deals 
with  Truth  itself,  Understanding  only  with 
relations;  ^Understanding  moves  in  the  do- 
main of  logic  and  argument;  Reason  in  the 
higher  realm  of  Poetry  and  Virtue.  \  Man's 
spiritual  welfare  depends  in  large  measure 
upon  the  subordination  of  the  Understanding 
to  the  Reason.  Much  of  the  merit  of  this 
philosophy  lies  in  its  moral  loftiness  and  its 
religious  depth.  The  German  literature, 
inspired  by  it  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
"breathes  a  spirit  of  devoutness  and  eleva- 
tion," and  its  greatest  thinkers,  men  like 
Fichte,  possess  a  rare  moral  grandeur.  The 
description  of  this  "cold,  colossal,  adaman- 
tine spirit,  standing  erect  and  clear,  like  a 
Cato  Major  among  degenerate  men,"  is  well 
known. 

The  distinction  between  the  Understand- 
ing and  the  Reason  affords  Carlyle  through- 
out the  essays  a  criterion  for  judging  emi- 
nent men.     As  in  the  realm  of  poetry,  so  in  j» 
that  of  philosophy  Goethe  and  Voltaire  are  1 
contrasted    types.      With    Voltaire    Under- 
standing is  supreme.     He  sees  no  mystery 
or  majesty  in  heaven   or   earth;   "his   sub- 


28  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

limest  Apocalypse  of  Nature  lies  in  the 
microscope  and  telescope;  the  Earth  is  a 
place  for  producing  corn;  the  Starry  Heav- 
ens are  admirable  as  a  nautical  timekeeper."* 
This  constitutes  the  ground  of  his  inferiority 
to  Goethe,  who  dwells  in  the  realm  of  Reason. 
I  The  same  superiority  in  less  degree  belongs 
to  other  Germans,  to  Schiller,  to  Richter, 
and  to  Novalis. 

In  the  essay  on  the  last  named  writer 
Carlyle  once  more  undertakes  to  expound  to 
some  extent  the  transcendental  philosophy. 
We  have  again  the  distinction  between  the 
]  absolute  existence  of  spirit  and  the  relative 
existence  of  matter.  j  "To  a  Transcenden- 
talist  matter  has  an~existence,  but  only  as  a 
Phenomenon;  were  we  not  there  neither 
would  it  be  there;  it  is  a  mere  Relation,  or 
rather  the  result  of  a  Relation  between  our 
living  Souls  and  the  great  First  Cause ;  and 
depends  for  its  apparent  qualities  on  our 
bodily  and  mental  organs;  having  itself  no 
intrinsic  qualities;  being,  in  the  common 
sense  of  that  word,  Nothing." 

Carlyle  proceeds  next  to  explain  the  Kan- 
tian doctrine  of  subjectivity  of  Space  and 

a  Voltaire. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      29 

Time,  and  then  repeats  the  distinction  made 
iiTfhe  earlier  essay  between  the  Understand- 
ing and  the  Reason.  In  his  discussion  of 
these  ideas  and  of  the  application  made  of 
them  by  Novalis  we  come  upon  many  of  the 
phrases  familiar  to  the  readers  of  Sartor. 
The  material  Creation  is  "an  Appearance,  a 
typical  shadow  in  which  the  Deity  manifests 
himself  to  Man";  it  is  "a  show";  "Sound 
and  Smoke  overclouding  'the  Splendour  of 
Heaven' " ;  it  is  "the  veil  and  mysterious  \ 
Garment  of  the  Unseen";  the  earth  and  its 
glories  are  a  "vapour  and  a  Dream." 

This  idealism  may  be  universally  applied. 
In  accordance  with  its  mode  of  thought  the 
physical  universe  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  a 
garment  of  Deity;  the  Visible  Church  is 
only  the  outward  mechanism  of  the  Invisible 
Church;  society  is  governed  by  a  Social 
Idea: 

"Every  Society,  every  Polity,  has  a  spir- 
itual principle;  is  the  embodiment,  tentative 
and  more  or  less  complete,  of  an  Idea;  all 
its  tendencies  of  endeavor,  specialties  of 
custom,  its  laws,  politics  and  whole  pro- 
cedure (as  the  glance  of  some  Montesquieu, 
across  innumerable  superficial  entangle- 


30  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

ments,  can  partly  decipher),  are  prescribed 
by  an  Idea,  and  flow  naturally  from  it,  as 
movements  from  the  living  source  of  motion. 
This  Idea,  be  it  of  devotion  to  a  man  or 
class  of  men,  to  a  creed,  to  an  institution,  or 
even,  as  in  more  ancient  times,  to  a  piece  of 
land,  is  ever  a  true  Loyalty;  has  in  it  some- 
thing of  a  religious,  paramount,  quite  infi- 
nite character;  it  is  properly  the  Soul  of 
the  State,  its  Life,  mysterious  as  other  forms 
of  Life,  and  like  these  working  secretly,  and 
in  a  depth  beyond  that  of  consciousness. "a 

In  the  novel  of  Wotton  Reinfred  the 
mystic  philosopher  Dalbrook,  whom  Leslie 
Stephen  identifies  with  Coleridge,  is  the 
champion  of  the  transcendental  philosophy. 
Incapable  of  action  and  without  unity  in 
himself,  he  is  an  ardent  seeker  of  truth  and 
a  worshipper  of  the  invisible.  A  single  pas- 
sage on  Truth,  spoken  by  Dalbrook,  may  be 
quoted  for  the  sake  of  its  characteristic 
quality  and  its  intrinsic  beauty: 

"  'It  is  expressed  oftener  than  it  is  listened 
to  or  comprehended,'  said  the  other  in  reply ; 
'for  our  ears  are  heavy,  and  the  divine 
harmony  of  the  spheres  is  drowned  in  the 

a  Characteristics. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      31 

gross,  harsh  dissonance  of  earthly  things. 
Expressed?  In  the  expiring  smile  of  mar- 
tyrs ;  in  the  actions  of  a  Howard  and  a  Cato ; 
in  the  still  existence  of  all  good  men.  Echoes 
of  it  come  to  us  from  the  song  of  the  poet ; 
the  sky  with  its  azure  and  its  rainbow  and 
its  beautiful  vicissitudes  of  morn  and  even 
shows  it  forth;  the  earth  also  with  her  floods 
and  everlasting  Alps,  the  ocean  with  its  tem- 
pests and  its  calms.  It  is  an  open  secret, 
but  we  have  no  clear  vision  for  it:  woe  to  us 
if  we  have  no  vision  at  all !' ' 

It  is  a  somewhat  curious  fact  that  Car- 
lyle's  first  important  discussion  of  an  ethical 
problem   occurs   in  the  little-read  essay  on 
The  Life  and   Writings   of   Werner.      The 
doctrines  are  not  yet  set  forth  boldly  as  Car-  \ 
lyle's  own,  but  presented  merely  as  the  creed  1 
of    a    mystical    German    dramatist.      Many  / 
pages  of  confused  and  cloudy  character  had 
to  be  waded  through  before  this  creed  could 
be  ascertained.    When,  however,  we  do  reach 
the  conclusion  we  find  that  it  agrees  with 
the  decision  which  Carlyle  himself  was  slowly 
forming    during    these    years.      Under    the 
mythuses  of  Phosphoros  and  Baffometus,  in 
the  latter  of  which  we  recognize  the  "Bapho- 


32  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

metic  Fire-Baptism"  of  Sartor,  Carlyle  finds 
figured  his  own  doctrine  of  resignation. 

"His  [Werner's]  fundamental  principle  of 
morals  we  have  seen  in  part  already:  it  does 
not  exclusively  or  primarily  belong  to  him- 
self; being  little  more  than  that  high  tenet 
of  entire  Self-forgetfulness,  that  'merging 
of  the  Me  in  the  Idea9;  a  principle  which 
reigns  both  in  Stoical  and  Christian  ethics, 
and  is  at  this  day  common,  in  theory,  among 
all  German  philosophers,  especially  of  the 
Transcendental  class.  Werner  has  adopted 
this  principle  with  his  whole  heart  and  his 
whole  soul,  as  the  indispensable  condition  of 
all  Virtue He  wiU  not  have  Happi- 
ness, under  any  form,  to  be  the  real  or  chief 
end  of  man:  this  is  but  love  of  enjoyment, 
disguise  it  as  we  like;  and  a  more  complex 
and  sometimes  more  respectable  species  of 
hunger,  he  would  say;  to  be  admitted  as  an 
indestructible  element  in  human  nature,  but 
nowise  to  be  recognized  as  the  highest;  on 
the  contrary,  to  be  resisted  and  incessantly 
warred  with,  till  it  become  obedient  to  love 
of  God,  which  is  only,  in  the  truest  sense, 
love  of  Goodness,  and  the  germ  of  which  lies 
deep  in  the  inmost  nature  of  man ;  of  author- 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      33 

ity  superior  to  all  sensitive  impulses;  form- 
ing, in  fact,  the  grand  law  of  his  being,  as 
subjection  to  it  forms  the  first  and  last  con- 
dition of  spiritual  health.  He  thinks  that 
to  propose  a  reward  for  virtue  is  to  render 
virtue  impossible.  He  warmly  seconds 
Schleiermacher  in  declaring  that  even  the 
hope  of  Immortality  is  a  consideration  unfit 
to  be  introduced  into  religion,  and  tending 
only  to  pervert  it,  and  impair  its  sacred- 
ness." 

It  will  be  recognized  that  here  we  have  all 
the  essential  elements  of  Carlyle's  ethics  as 
set  forth  in  the  second  book  of  Sartor 
Resartus. 

The  same  ethical  idea  runs  through  the 
great  essay  on  Burns.  But  here  it  is  no 
longer  hesitatingly  uttered  as  the  creed  of 
another,  but  set  forth  in  words  of  burning 
conviction. 

"We  become  men,  not  after  we  have  been 
dissipated,  and  disappointed  in  the  chase  of 
false  pleasure ;  but  after  we  have  ascertained, 
in  any  way,  what  impassable  barriers  hem  us 
in  through  this  life;  how  mad  it  is  to  hope 
for  contentment  to  our  infinite  soul  from 
the  gifts  of  this  extremely  finite  world;  that 


34  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

a  man  must  be  sufficient  for  himself;  and 
that  for  suffering  and  enduring  there  is  no 
remedy  but  striving  and  doing.  Manhood 
begins  when  we  have  in  any  way  made  truce 
with  Necessity;  begins  even  when  we  have 
surrendered  to  Necessity,  as  the  most  part 
only  do;  but  begins  joyfully  and  hopefully 
only  when  we  have  reconciled  ourselves  to 
Necessity;  and  thus,  in  reality,  triumphed 
over  it,  and  felt  that  in  Necessity  we  are 
free." 

Carlyle  finds  Burns'  inferiority  to  men 
like  Locke  and  Milton  and  Cervantes  in  his 
inability  to  attain  to  their  condition  of  self- 
forget  fulness.  These  men  were  not  "self- 
seekers  and  self-worshippers,"  they  had 
another  object  than  personal  enjoyment; 
they  counted  it  "blessedness  to  spend  and  be 
spent"  in  the  service  of  that  "Invisible  Good- 
ness, which  alone  is  man's  reasonable  ser- 
vice." 

Still  more  clearly  anticipatory  of  the 
familiar  passages  in  Sartor  is  the  discussion 
of  the  "Happiness-question"  in  the  essay 
on  Schiller.  Carlyle's  argument  is  that, 
although  we  recognize  the  fact  (that  the  gross 
are  happier  than  the  refined,  we  would  still 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      35 

be  unwilling  to  change  places  with  them. 
His  position  in  regard  to  the  whole  matter 
is  nowhere  stated  more  clearly  than  in  this 
essay/) 

"Tf  Happiness  mean  Welfare,  there  is  no 
doubt  but  all  men  should  and  must  pursue 
their  Welfare,  that  is  to  say,  pursue  what  is 
worthy  of  their  pursuit.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  Happiness  mean,  as  for  most 
men  it  does,  'agreeable  sensations,'  Enjoy- 
ment refined  or  not,  then  must  we  observe 
that  there  is  a  doubt;  or  rather  that  there 
is  a  certainty  the  other  way.  Strictly  con- 
sidered, this  truth,  (that  man  has  in  him 
something  higher  than  a  Love  of  Pleasure, 
take  Pleasure  in  what  sense  you  will,  has 
been  the  text  of  all  true  Teachers  and 
Preachers  since  the  beginning  of  the  world; 
and  in  one  or  another  dialect,  we  may  hope, 
will  continue  to  be  preached  and  taught  till 
the  world  end.'^ 

Wotton  Reinfred  opens  characteristically 
with  a  discussion  of  the  question  of  happi- 
ness, Wotton  contending  that  happiness  "if 
it  be  the  aim  was  never  meant  to  be  the  end 
of  our  being."  The  subject  is  resumed  in  a 
later  chapter.  Various  ideas  familiar  to  the 


36  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

reader  of  Carlyle  are  brought  forward,  that 
i  happiness  is  dependent  upon  stupidity  and 
J  "an  excellent  nervous  system" ;  that  unhap- 
piness  would  be  less  if  we  ceased  to  demand 
that  to  which  we  have  no  proper  claim ;  that 
"our  highest,  our  only  real  blessedness  lies 
in  this  very  warfare  with  evil"(^that  not 
happiness,  but  the  disinterested  pursuit  of 
virtue  is  man's  highest  wish.^  This  leads 
naturally  to  the  question  of  self-interest  as 
a  motive  for  conduct  and  its  rejection 
together  with  all  other  motives  "in  that 
sense  of  the  word  motive."  The  germ  of  the 
theory  of  unconsciousness  later  elaborated  in 
the  essay  called  Characteristics  is  to  be  found 
in  a  sentence  in  the  same  paragraph:  "The 
virtue  we  are  conscious  of  is  no  right  virtue." 
That  the  best  answer  to  all  such  problems 
is  to  be  found  in  the  right  performance  of 
duty  and  that  "the  end  of  man  is  an  action, 
not  a  thought,"  is  a  conclusion  reached  early 
in  the  book.  "It  is  a  poor  philosophy  which 
can  be  taught  in  words:  we  talk  and  talk; 
and  talking  without  acting,  though  Socrates 
were  the  speaker,  does  not  help  our  case  but 
aggravate  it.  Thou  must  act,  thou  must 
work,  thou  must  do!  Collect  thyself,  com- 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      37 

pose  thyself,  find  what  is  wanting  that  so 
tortures  thee;  do  but  attempt  with  all  thy 
strength  to  attain  it  and  thou  art  saved." 

Throughout  the  period  of  the  early  essays 
we  may  say,  I  think,  with  confidence,  that 
this  principle  of  Self- Annihilation,  or/Resig- 
nation, involving  the  renunciation  of  nappi- 
ness  on  the  one  hand  and  devotion  to  some 
higher  ideal  on  the  other,  constitutes  Car- 
lyle's  most  important  ethical  teaching^  In 
addition  to  this  he  lays  chief  emphasis  upon 
reverence  and  sincerity  as  leading  virtues. 

Reverence  for  that  which  is  higher  and 
nobler  than  ourselves  is  the  beginning  of 
wisdom.  Carlyle's  chief  debt  to  Goethe  was 
the  lesson  that  reverence  was  still  possible 
for  all  men.  The  chief  fault  in  Voltaire's 
constitution  was  the  lack  of  the  feeling  of 
reverence.  All  manifestations  of  the  spirit, 
all  evidences  of  the  invisible  Goodness,  should 
inspire  in  us  this  feeling.  Especially  is  this 
true  of  the  highest  manifestation  of  all,  the 
life  of  a  spiritually  gifted  man.  Such  men 
are  "Illuminated  Characters"  in  the  Book 
of  Life,  "Hieroglyphs  of  a  true  Sacred 
Writing,"  "mystic  windows  through  which 
we  glance  deeper  into  the  hidden  ways  of 


38  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Nature."*  The  doctrine  of  Hero-Worship  is 
not  prominent  in  the  early  essays,  does  not 
become  so  until  the  criticism  of  Croker's 
Edition  of  Boswell's  Johnson  in  1832,  but  it 
finds  occasional  expression.  Burns'  visit  to 
Edinburgh  is  an  illustration  of  it.  Vol- 
taire's final  visit  to  Paris  is  highly  signifi- 
cant of  the  reverence  paid  to  wisdom  or  the 
show  of  it.  "Only  to  spiritual  worth  can 
the  spirit  do  reverence ;  only  in  a  soul  deeper 
and  better  than  ours  can  we  see  any  heavenly 
mystery,  and  in  humbling  ourselves  feel  our- 
selves exalted We  rejoice  to  see  and 

know  that  such  a  principle  exists  perennially 
in  man's  inmost  bosom ;  that  there  is  no  heart 
so  sunk  and  stupefied,  none  so  withered  and 
pampered,  but  the  felt  presence  of  a  nobler 
heart  will  inspire  it  and  lead  it  captive." 

Sincerity,  as  Carlyle  later  elaborated  the 
idea,  came  to  mean  not  only  honesty  of  pur- 
pose, but  vision  and  sympathy;  a  power  to 
see  through  appearance  into  reality,  a  dwell- 
ing in  the  Truth  of  things,  a  living  in  the 
Divine  Idea.  The  inculcation  of  this  virtue, 
frequently  reiterated  in  Carlyle's  later  work, 

a  These  familiar  phrases  first  occur  in  the  article  on  Peter 
Nimmo  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  February,   1831. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      39 

is  less  prominent  in  the  early  period.  In  the 
essay  on  Burns,  however,  he  finds  it,  "the 
root  of  most  other  virtues,  literary  as  well 
as  moral."  Burns'  chief  excellence  is  "his 
Sincerity,  his  indisputable  air  of  Truth." 
"Let  a  man  but  speak  forth  with  genuine 
earnestness  the  thought,  the  emotion,  the 
actual  condition  of  his  own  heart ;  and  other 
men,  so  strangely  are  we  all  knit  together  by 
the  tie  of  sympathy,  must  and  will  give  heed 
to  him." 

Carlyle's  religion,  as  visible  to  us  in  the 
early  essays,  is  neither  dogmatic  and  eccle- 
siastical, nor  vaguely  benevolent  and  human- 
itarian. It  is  not  allied  with  theology  on 
the  one  hand  or  with  socialism  on  the  other. 
It  has  been  called  pantheistic,  but  pantheism 
is  a  vague.ierm  and  may  mean  anything  or 
nothing.  Religion  for  Carlyle  consisted  in 
a  clear  perception  of,  and  a  deep  reverence 
for,  what  he  calls  the  Divine  Idea  of  the 
World.  /The  perception  everywhere  of  a 
divine  power  and  presence,  manifest  in  the 
moving  of  the  stars  and  in  the  smallest  blade 
of  grass,  through  which  as  through  a 
window  man  may  look  into  the  infinite,  the 
recognition  of  the  miraculous  in  what  men 


40  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

are  pleased  to  call  the  common,  and  of  the 
supernatural  in  the  natural,  these  are  its 
essential  modes.  The  truly  religious  tem- 
perament is  described  in  Tieck's  comment  on 
Novalis,  for  whom  "it  had  become  the  most 
natural  disposition  to  regard  the  commonest 
and  nearest  as  a  wonder,  and  the  strange, 
the  supernatural  as  something  common; 
man's  every-day  life  itself  lay  round  him  like 
a  wondrous  fable,  and  those  regions  which 
the  most  dream  of  or  doubt  of  as  of  a  thing 
distant,  incomprehensible,  were  for  him  a 
beloved  home."!  Such  perception  and  recog- 
nition of  the  divine  about  us  is  possible  only 
to  profound  spirits,  gifted  with  the  powers 
of  love,  reverence  and  insight.  It  will  be 
seen  in  the  following  section  that  these  are 
the  very  faculties  which  Carlyle  has  de- 
manded also  of  the  true  poet.  It  may  be 
inferred,  therefore,  that  the  true  poet  and 
the  truly  religious  man  are  one  and  the 
same,  except  perhaps  in  faculty  of  expres- 
sion. This  is  indeed  Carlyle's  belief.  Poetry 
"is  but  another  form  of  Wisdom,  of  Reli- 
gion; is  itself  Wisdom  and  Religion."* 

Religion,  then,  is  not  to  be  identified  with 

a  Burns. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      41 

its  forms.     These  are,  as  he  quotes  approv- 
ingly from  Richter,  but  "the  Ethnic  Fore- 
court  of  the  Invisible  Temple"  which  con- 
stitutes the  true  church.     In  the  essay  on  t 
Werner  the  idea  is  further  elaborated: 

"It  is  a  common  theory  among  the  Ger- 
mans that  every  Creed,  every  Form  of  wor- 
ship, is  a  form  merely;  the  mortal  and  ever- 
changing  body,  in  which  the  immortal  and 
unchanging  spirit  of  Religion  is,  with  more 
or  less  completeness,  expressed  to  the  mate- 
rial eye,  and  made  manifest  and  influential 
among  the  doings  of  men."  The  figure  of 
the  Phoenix  as  "shadowing  forth  the  history 
of  his  own  Faith,"  used  by  Carlyle  in  Sartor 
as  the  emblem  of  the  history  of  all  religion, 
is  borrowed  from  Werner. 

In  the  figure  of  the  Phoenix  two  ideas  are 
implicit:  first,  the  distinction  in  religion 
between  the  spirit  or  reality  and  the  forms 
or  phenomena;  and  second,  the  evolutionary 
idea,  the  unchanging  spirit  of  religion  being 
thought  of  as  passing  through  continuous 
metamorphosis  of  perishable  forms.  To  this 
idea  Carlyle  applies  the  Kantian  distinction 
between  the  Understanding  and  the  Reason, 
the  forms  of  religion  being  in  the  province 


42  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

of  the  former  and  its  spirit  in  that  of  the 
latter.  Men,  therefore,  who  allow  their 
Understanding  to  master  their  Reason  can- 
not by  any  possibility  be  religious  men,  since 
they  are  sure  to  place  the  forms  or  the  prac- 
tical benefits  of  religion  above  its  mysterious 
spirit.  This  is  the  trouble  with  the  Ben- 
thams  and  the  Paleys  as  well  as  the  Vol- 
taires.  Voltaire,  indeed,  spent  his  whole 
strength  in  battling,  if  not  quite  ineffect- 
ually, at  any  rate  with  an  entire  misunder- 
standing of  the  situation.  "That  the  Chris- 
tian Religion  could  have  any  deeper  founda- 
tion than  Books,  could  possibly  be  written 
in  the  purest  nature  of  man,  in  mysterious, 
ineffaceable  characters,  to  which  Books,  and 
all  Revelations,  and  authentic  traditions, 
were  but  a  subsidiary  matter,  were  but  as 
the  light  by  which  that  divine  writing  was 
to  be  read; — nothing  of  this  seems  to  have, 
even  in  the  faintest  manner,  occurred  to 
him." 

It  follows  from  what  has  already  been 
said  that  the  Christian  Religion  is  to  be 
thought  of  as  simply  one  form,  though 
immeasurably  the  highest,  of  the  universal 
spirit  of  religion.  To  compare  it,  however, 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION      4,3 

as  superior,  inferior  or  equal  to,  any  other 
form  is  to  hit  beside  the  mark,  since  it  differs 
from  such  forms  in  its  entire  nature,  "as  a 
perfect  Ideal  Poem  does  from  a  correct  com- 
putation in  Arithmetic."  To  exactly  define 
its  nature  is  also  impossible.  Something  of 
its  divine  character  may,  however,  be  sug- 
gested in  such  phrases  as  Humility,  or  the 
"Sanctuary  of  Sorrow,"  or  may  be  symbol- 
ized by  some  such  parable  as  that  of  the 
Three  Reverences  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  to 
which  Carlyle  makes  reference  in  the  essay 
on  Goethe,  in  Sartor,  and  in  the  Edinburgh 
Address  of  1866. 

"But  now  we  have  to  speak  of  the  Third 
Religion,  grounded  on  Reverence  for  what 
is  Under  us:  this  we  name  the  Christian;  as 
in  the  Christian  Religion  such  a  temper  is 
the  most  distinctly  manifested:  it  is  a  last 
step  to  which  mankind  was  fitted  and  des- 
tined to  attain.  But  what  a  task  was  it,  not 
only  to  be  patient  with  the  Earth,  and  let 
it  lie  beneath  us,  we  appealing  to  a  higher 
birthplace;  but  also  to  recognize  humility 
and  poverty,  mockery  and  despite,  disgrace 
and  wretchedness,  suffering  and  death,  to 
recognize  these  things  as  divine;  nay,  even 


44  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

on  sin  and  crime  to  look  not  as  hindrances, 
but  to  honor  and  love  them  as  furtherances, 
of  what  is  holy."a 

The  essence  of  the  Christian  Religion 
resides  then  in  its  spirit  of  humility,  rever- 
ence and  self-denial.  "Enlightened  self- 
interest,"  which  is  advanced  by  the  French 
Philosophes  and  the  English  Utilitarians  as 
a  sufficient  guide  for  conduct  will  prove  a 
"dim  hornlantern"  hardly  able  to  keep  man- 
kind from  stumbling  into  quagmires.  As 
self-denial  is  the  primary  virtue,  so  we  may 
say,  with  apologies  to  Matthew  Arnold,  that 
self-denial,  "touched  with  emotion,"  is,  in 
Carlyle's  opinion,  the  heart  of  the  Christian 
Religion. 

a  Quoted  from  Meister's  Travels  in  the  essay  on  Goethe. 


II 

THEORIES  OF  POETRY 

"Divine  philosophy"  wrought  into  noble 
poetical  expression  and  breathing  a  lofty 
and  devout  character  seemed  ever  to  Carlyle 
as  "musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute,"  but  mere 
versification,  the  thin  piping  of  feeble 
poetasters,  aroused  in  him  only  contempt. 
Until  after  the  completion  of  Sartor  he 
looked  upon  himself  primarily  as  a  literary 
critic,  and  though  interest  in  purely  literary 
matters  seemed  increasingly  less  vital  to  him 
in  his  later  work,  the  distinction  formulated 
in  the  early  essays  between  true  poetry  and 
manufactured  verse  continued  to  be  for  him 
a  valid  one.  Even  in  the  early  years,  how- 
ever, he  seems  occasionally  to  have  wavered 
in  his  faith,  or  to  have  forgotten  his  own 
distinction.  In  his  journal  for  January, 
1830,  he  speaks  of  poetry  as  "the  jingle  of 
maudlin  persons"  and  adds:  "My  greatly 
most  delightful  reading  is  when  some  Goethe 
musically  teaches  me." 


46  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

The  italics  show  where  Carlyle's  chief 
emphasis  lies.  In  the  essay  on  Goethe,  the 
function  of  poetry  is  declared  to  be  the 
revelation  of  the  "inward  and  essential 
Truth  in  Art"  and  in  Early  German  Liter- 
ature the  poet  is  defined  as  "he  who,  not 
indeed  by  mechanical  but  by  poetical 
methods,  can  instruct  us,  can  more  and 
more  evolve  for  us  the  mystery  of  our  own 
life."  Undoubtedly  Carlyle  here  overem- 
phasizes the  teaching  function,  which  is 
hardly  the  primary  essential  in  poetry. 
Not  to  expound,  but  to  illuminate,  not  to 
explain  the  nature  of  beauty  and  truth,  but 
to  convey  us  into  the  region  of  beauty  and 
truth,  to  make  us  sharers  in  these  things, 
this  is  what  the  best  poetry  does  for  us. 

A  more  vital  discussion  of  the  subject 
occurs  in  the  State  of  German  Literature. 
Here  the  purpose  of  poetry  is  separated  not 
only  from  that  of  amusement  and  sensation, 
but  from  utility  also.  It  is  to  be  loved  for 
itself  "not  because  it  is  useful  for  spiritual 
pleasure,  or  even  for  moral  culture,  but 
because  it  is  Art,  and  the  highest  in  man, 
and  the  soul  of  all  Beauty."  "It  dwells  and 
is  born  in  the  inmost  Spirit  of  Man,"  it  is 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY  47 

one  with  love  of  Virtue  and  true  belief  in 
God,  "another  phase  of  the  same  highest 
principle  in  the  mysterious  infinitude  of  the 
human  Soul."  This  is  perhaps  Carlyle's 
most  satisfactory  discussion  of  the  subject. 
William  Morris  was  wont  to  say  that  the 
customary  talk  about  inspiration  as  the 
origin  of  poetry  was  nonsense,  and  that 
poetical  creation  is  a  matter  of  craftsman- 
ship alone.  Carlyle's  view  differs  radically 
and  fundamentally  from  this.  For  him,  as 
for  Wordsworth,  it  is  "the  breath  and  finer 
spirit  of  all  knowledge,"  coming,  one  knows 
not  how,  from  the  mysterious  depths  of 
man's  nature  and  without  regard  to  theory 
or  discernible  law. 

More  objectively  considered,  poetry  is  to 
be  looked  upon  as  the  interpretation  of  that 
Divine  Idea  or  spiritual  reality  of  which  the 
visible  Universe  is  but  the  "symbol  and  sen- 
sible manifestation."  !  In  this  invisible  the 
poet  lives  and  has  his  Tseing.  "Life  with  its 
prizes  and  its  failures,  its  tumult  and  its 
jarring  din,  were  a  poor  matter  in  itself;  to 
him  it  is  baseless,  transient  and  hollow,  an 
infant's  dream;  but  beautiful  also,  and 
solemn  and  of  mysterious  significance.  Why 


48  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

should  he  not  love  it  and  reverence  it?  Is 
not  all  visible  nature,  all  sensible  existence 
the  symbol  and  vesture  of  the  Invisible  and 
Infinite?"4 

In  the  greatest  poets  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  actual  aspects  of  life,  with  its 
meanness,  barrenness  and  skepticism,  are 
sharply  delineated,  yet  at  the  same  time  its 
"secret  significance  is  laid  open,"  its  beauty 
and  its  spiritual  meaning.  The  poet  teaches 
us,  therefore,  at  the  same  time  to  know  the 
world  and  to  love  it.  "All  is  hollowness,  and 
insufficiency,  and  sin  and  woe  are  there ;  but 
with  them,  nay  by  them  do  beauty  and  mercy 
and  a  solemn  grandeur  shine  forth,  and  man 
with  his  stinted  and  painful  existence  is  no 
longer  little  or  poor,  but  lovely  and  vener- 
able ;  for  a  glory  of  Infinitude  is  round  him ; 
and  it  is  by  his  very  poverty  that  he  is  rich, 
and  by  his  littleness  that  he  is  great. "b 

For  such  revelation  of  truth  and  beauty 
three  things  are  necessary,  the  clear  eye, 
the  loving  heart,  the  steadfast  faith.  Lit- 
erary men  so  gifted  are  to  be  looked  upon 
as  a  perpetual  priesthood,  setting  forth  the 

a  Wotton  Reinfred. 
b  Ibid. 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY  49 

Divine  Idea  to  each  new  age  in  the  forms 
which  that  age  demands  and  will  under- 
stand. In  our  time  one  literature  alone  has 
given  us  poetry  in  this  high  sense,  the  Ger- 
man. 

The  various  poets  are  criticised  from 
this  point  of  view.  Goethe  is  a  great  poet 
because  he  has  "incorporated  the  everlasting 
Reason  of  Man  in  forms  visible  to  his  Sense." 
Similarly  Burns  is  a  true  poet,  because  in 
his  heart  resides  "some  effluence  of  wisdom, 
some  tone  of  the  'Eternal  Melodies,'  "  and 
because  he  has  discerned  that  "the  Ideal 
world  is  not  remote  from  the  Actual,  but 
under  it  and  within  it,"  finding  beauty  even 
in  the  Scottish  peasant's  life,  "the  meanest 
and  rudest  of  all  lives." 

Less  gifted  writers,  for  example,  certain 
of  the  German  playwrights,  are  distin- 
guished as  prosaists  and  not  poets.  Their 
art  is  "a  knack,  a  recipe,  or  secret  of  the 
craft";  it  is  manufacture  and  not  creation. 
For  poetry  there  is  no  secret  except  this 
general  one{  "that  the  poet  be  a  man  of 
purer,  higher,  and  richer  nature  than  other 
men.'* 

We   have    seen   that   Voltaire    stands    for 


50  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Carlyle  as  a  type  in  marked  contrast  with 
Goethe.  He  fails  of  being  a  poet,  not 
because  he  is  without  intellectual  vision,  but 
because  he  is  without  love  and  reverence,  and 
without  faith.  The  Divine  Idea  has  no 
meaning  for  him.  He  lives  in  appearances 
and  not  in  reality.  He  is  not  capable  of 
true  humor,  but  only  of  ridicule,  grounded 
not  on  "fond  sportful  sympathy,"  but  on 
contempt  or  indifference.  His  verse  is  the 
result  of  contrivance  and  not  of  inspiration; 
it  is  distinguished  by  a  modish  elegance,  not 
by  universal,  everlasting  beauty. 

Historically  considered,  poetry  is  to  be 
looked  upon  as  an  expression  of  the  highest 
spiritual  attainment  of  the  epoch  in  which 
it  is  written,  "the  test  how  far  Music,  or 
Freedom,  existed  therein";  and  the  success 
of  the  literary  historian  will  depend  upon 
his  ability  to  discern  and  record  this  highest 
aim  or  enthusiasm  in  its  successive  direc- 
tions and  developments.  Judged  by  this 
standard  the  present  age  cannot  be  ranked 
high.  The  poetry  of  our  time  fails  to  dis- 
close "to  our  sense  the  deep  infinite  harmo- 
nies of  Nature  and  Man's  soul";  it  "has  no 
eye  for  the  Invisible";  it  worships  strength 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY  51 

rather  than  beauty .a  And  yet,  in  spite  of 
this  fact  and  largely  owing  to  the  chaotic 
condition  of  religious  thought  and  belief, 
literature  has  taken  a  commanding  place  in 
the  modern  world.  The  "true  Autocrat  and 
Pope"  of  to-day  is  the  Man  of  Letters,  "the 
real  or  seeming  wisest  of  the  past  age"  ;b 
"the  true  Church  of  England,  at  this  mo- 
ment, lies  in  the  Editors  of  its  Newspapers."0 
Still  more  hopefully  may  we  look  to  Ger- 
many, where  signs  of  a  new  spiritual  era  are 
to  be  met  with,  and  skepticism,  frivolity  and 
sensuality  are  beginning  to  disappear  before 
the  return  of  the  "ancient  creative  inspira- 
tion." 

In  criticising  Carlyle's  theory  of  poetry 
it  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  an  integral 
part  of  a  well-considered  philosophy.  This 
philosophy  lays  chief  emphasis  on  inspira- 
tion, intuition,  and  the  primary  energies  of 
man's  nature.  Just  as  in  religion  Carlyle 
minimized  almost  to  the  vanishing  point  the 
importance  of  evidences  of  the  faith  and 
authority  of  the  church,  so  in  poetry  he 
looked  upon  matters  of  technique  as  of  prac- 

a  Signs  of  the  Times. 
b  Historic  Survey. 
c  Signs  of  the  Times. 


52  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

tically  negligible  value.  To  the  man  of 
truly  poetic  inspiration  he  believed  that 
these  things  would  come  as  a  matter  of 
course.  The  failure  to  realize  how  impor- 
tant a  part  verbal  music  plays  in  poetry  is 
partly  due  also  to  a  very  defective  ear,  a 
fact  which  becomes  evident  in  reading  Car- 
lyle's  early  attempts  at  verse,  notably  the 
blank  verse  translations  in  the  Schiller. 

A  further  limitation  was  the  result  of  his 
Scotch  peasant  inheritance.  He  was  born  a 
Calvinist  and  remained  through  life  a  Puri- 
tan. The  sensuous  made  little  appeal  to 
him.  His  range  of  interests  was  narrow, 
being  practically  confined  to  those  activities 
which  have  a  clearly  demonstrable  relation 
to  religion  and  conduct.  In  critical  and 
troubled  times  he  advised  the  earnest  man 
to  "perambulate  his  picture  gallery"  in 
silence,  he  execrated  "view  hunting"  and  the 
chatter  that  resulted  from  it,  and  he  had 
little  patience  with  poetry  which  ended  in 
mere  pastime.  Carlyle's  culture  was  not 
perfectly  rounded,  it  was  too  preponderat- 
ingly  Hebraic  and  not  sufficiently  Hellenic, 
and  his  estimate  of  poetry  suffers  from  this 
limitation. 


THEORIES  OF  POETRY  53 

On  the  other  hand,  as  applied  at  any  rate 
to  the  best  poetry,  his  criticism  has  a  depth 
of  penetration  corresponding  to  its  narrow- 
ness. Such  poetry  is  invested  with  lofty 
dignity,  it  is  given  a  definite  place  in  a  pro- 
found philosophy  of  life,  and  it  is  shown  in 
its  proper  relations  to  art  and  religion  as 
a  manifestation  of  the  human  spirit.  Car- 
lyle  had  himself  many  of  the  essential  quali- 
ties of  a  true  poet,  he  knew  the  tones  of  the 
great  "road-melody  or  marching-music  of 
mankind,"  and  here  as  elsewhere  he  speaks 
to  us  not  without  authority. 


Ill 

SPIRITUAL  HISTORY 

More  important  than  any  discussions  in 
the  abstract  concerning  Poetry,  Philosophy, 
or  Religion,  is  Carlyle's  interest  in  spiritual 
biography.  This  may  be  called  his  para- 
mount and  omnipresent  interest.  The  great 
aim  of  all  study  is  looked  upon  as  the  acqui- 
sition of  wisdom  in  the  ordering  of  life. 
The  great  source  of  such  wisdom  is  the 
biography  of  spiritually  gifted  men.  To 
this  end  all  poetry,  philosophy  and  history 
are  contributory.  These  are  but  different 
modes  of  manifestation  of  the  human  spirit. 
History  is  defined  a&  the  essence  of  innu- 
merable biographies; I  art  derives  its  chief 
value  from  its  revelation  of  the  personality 
of  the  artist;  poetry  should  be  made  the 
means  of  interpreting  the  poet.  Biog- 
raphy of  the  sort  which  Carlyle  chose  to 
write  contains  three  elements  which,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  he  seems  to  have 
regarded  as  indispensable:  the  ideal,  based 
upon  and  growing  out  of  the  actual,  and 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  55 

affording  opportunity  for  instruction  and 
edification.  A  biography  may  be  said  to 
possess  ideality  when  it  deals  with  lofty 
character,  and  when  it  shows  the  aim  and 
tendency  of  a  life  as  well  as  its  accomplish- 
ment, and  its  meaning  as  well  as  its  external 
activity.  It  possesses  actuality  when  it  is 
based  upon  ascertained  facts ;  and  it  may  be 
made  instructive  by  pointing  out  its  typical 
character  in  relation  to  the  life  which  we 
ourselves  must  live  and  the  difficulties  which 
we  must  encounter.  Such  biography  pos- 
sesses the  highest  sort  of  dignity  and  should 
result  from  a  reverent  and  dispassionate 
inquiry.  Sympathetic  endeavor  to  under- 
stand should  precede  judgment.  Readers  in 
studying  the  life  of  a  great  man  should 
strive  "to  work  their  way  into  his  manner  of 
thought,  till  they  see  the  world  with  his  eyes, 
feel  as  he  felt  and  judge  as  he  judged, 
neither  believing  nor  denying,  till  they  can 
in  some  measure  so  feel  and  so  judge." 

Consequently  the  most  important  facts  of 
history  or  biography  are  not  the  external 
but  the  internal.  These  facts  are  not  the 
most  obvious  and  often  make  the  least  stir. 
Biographers  are  prone  to  forget  that  "man 


56  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

has  a  soul  as  certainly  as  he  has  a  body" 
and  "that  properly  it  is  the  course  of  his 
unseen,  spiritual  life  which  informs  and 
rules  his  external  visible  life,  rather  than 
receives  rule  from  it;  in  which  spiritual  life, 
indeed,  and  not  in  any  outward  action  or 
condition  arising  from  it,  the  true  secret  of 
his  history  lies,  and  is  to  be  sought  after, 
and  indefinitely  approached."  /  To  portray 
the  facts  of  history  or  biography  so  as  to 
make  manifest  their  true  spiritual  signifi- 
cance is  a  task  then  of  boundless  importance 
and  of  boundless  difficulty,  a  fit  task  to 
engage  the  powers  of  philosopher  and  poet. 
The  choice  of  appropriate  subjects  for  bio- 
graphical treatment  is  also  of  importance. 
Two  types  of  men  seem  especiaUy  significant; 
the  man  who  represents  some  important 
period,  national  character,  or  historic  move- 
ment, and  the  man,  especially  characteristic 
of  the  modern  age,  who  has  gone  through 
some  sort  of  moral  struggle,  with  or  without 
victory.  Of  the  first  sort  are  Voltaire, 
Goethe,  Novalis,  Johnson;  ; of  the  latter, 
Goethe,  Schiller  and  Burns  are  the  most 
important  whom  Carlyle  studies.  This  is  for 
the  modern  man  the  most  instructive  and 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  57 

precious  species  of  biography.  It  furnishes 
the  spectacle  of  a  life  nobler  than  the  ordi- 
nary fighting  the  battle  offered  to  all  noble 
souls,  and  is  thus  the  means  of  furnishing  us 
with  inspiration  and  faith  in  ourselves.  All 
of  the  biographical  studies  should  be  brought 
to  the  test  which  Carlyle  himself  applied,  of 
ideality,  actuality,  and  edification.  Thus, 
Werner  is  "a  gifted  spirit  struggling  ear- 
nestly amid  the  new,  complex,  tumultuous 
influences  of  his  time  and  country."  Rich- 
ter,  a  still  more  instructive  example,  is  a 
character  heroic  and  devout,  formed  in  our 
own  age  through  "manifold  and  victorious 
struggling  with  the  world"  and  constituting 
a  Gospel  of  Freedom,  "preached  abroad  to 
all  men ;  whereby,  among  mean  unbelieving 
souls,  we  may  know  that  nobleness  has  not 
yet  become  impossible;  and,  languishing 
amid  boundless  triviality  and  despicability, 
still  understand  that  man's  nature  is  inde- 
feasibly  divine,  and  so  hold  fast  what  is  the 
most  important  of  all  faiths,  the  faith  in 
ourselves."  The  essays  on  Heyne  and  the 
German  playwrights  are  not  of  importance 
in  either  of  the  ways  mentioned,  and  Carlyle 
considered  them  as  pieces  of  comparatively 


58  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

little  worth.  The  formulation  of  a  bio- 
graphical method  was  of  course  a  gradual 
process  and  a  comparison  in  this  respect  of 
his  earlier  and  his  later  work  is  highly 
instructive. 

The  Life  of  Schiller  is  a  clear,  simple, 
engaging  narrative,  free  from  mannerism, 
stating  the  biographical  facts  with  scrupu- 
lous fidelity  and  criticising  the  works  with 
sympathy  and  insight.  It  has  been  praised 
by  all  its  critics,  and  is  indeed  one  of  the 
most  irreproachable  things  that  Carlyle  ever 
did.  His  own  entire  dissatisfaction  with  it 
and  later  desire  to  suppress  it  have  occa- 
sioned surprise,  and  it  has  been  suggested 
that  this  dissatisfaction  arose  after  the  per- 
fection of  the  characteristic  Carlylese  dic- 
tion, which  made  the  early  work  seem  im- 
mature and  ineffective.  But  Carlyle  was 
never  satisfied  with  it,  and  his  own  criticism, 
"My  mind  will  not  catch  hold  of  it," 
expresses  the  essential  truth.  If  we  compare 
the  Life  of  Schiller  with  the  first  essay  on 
Goethe  written  in  1828,  we  shall  see  that  in 
the  earlier  work  Carlyle  has  not  yet  pene- 
trated to  the  heart  of  his  subject,  or  thor- 
oughly assimilated  the  facts  at  his  disposal. 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  59 

Many  of  them  are  unrelated  to  any  central 
purpose.  The  book  shows  skill  rather  than 
power,  clear  rather  than  piercing  vision. 

Yet  the  ideal  of  what  biography  should 
aim  at  is  already  becoming  plain.  The 
author  proposes  "to  follow  the  steps  of  his 
[Schiller's]  intellectual  and  moral  culture; 
to  gather  from  his  life  and  works  some  pic- 
ture of  himself."  As  the  occurrences  of  his- 
tory are  to  be  measured  "by  their  influence 
upon  the  general  history  of  man,  their  ten- 
dency to  obstruct  or  to  forward  him  in  his 
advancement  towards  liberty,  knowledge, 
true  religion  and  dignity  of  mind,"  so  facts 
of  biography  are  to  be  judged  as  they  con- 
tribute to  spiritual  culture.  In  Schiller  Car- 
lyle  first  found  a  mind  in  several  important 
ways  representative  of  the  vital  experiences 
common  to  his  own  day.  Here  was  a  pure 
and  lofty  soul  struggling  in  the  midst  of  a 
complex  and  intricate  civilization  to  find 
an  adequate  standing-ground  for  himself, 
whereon  he  could  attain  to  his  true  spiritual 
stature  and  unity  with  himself.  "The  Ideal 
Man  that  lay  within  him,  the  image  of  him- 
self as  he  should  be,  was  formed  upon  a  strict 
and  curious  standard ;  and  to  reach  this  con- 


60  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

stantly  approached  and  constantly  receding 
emblem  of  perfection  was  the  unwearied 
effort  of  his  life."  He  was  encompassed  with 
many  obstructions,  and  harassed  by  poverty 
and  disease,  but  he  learned  to  conquer  pain 
and  to  attain  to  a  lofty  serenity.  This 
spiritual  progress  is  clearly  portrayed  in  his 
works,  which  pass  from  the  explosive  violence 
of  The  Robbers  through  various  intermediate 
stages  to  the  wisdom  of  Tell  and  the  lofty 
beauty  of  Wcdlenstein. 

Schiller  illustrates  also  the  struggle  with  \ 
the  modern  malady  of  religious  doubt.  He 
bears  the  marks  of  many  a  gloomy  conflict; 
he  reveals  the  earnest  mind  that  has  learned 
to  look  upon  life  as  a  solemn  mystery;  his 
works  bear  "the  impress  of  a  philosophic  and 
poetic  mind  struggling  with  all  its  vast 
energies  to  make  its  poetry  and  its  philos- 
ophy agree."  This  high  seriousness  reveals 
itself  also  in  his  love  of  truth,  his  hatred  of 
cant,  his  recognition  of  genius  as  "the 
inspired  gift  of  God,  a  solemn  mandate  to  its 
owner  to  go  forth  and  labor  in  his  sphere," 
and  of  literature  as  the  essence  of  "whatever 
speaks  to  the  immortal  part  of  man." 

But   in    spite   of   Schiller's   loftiness    and 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  61 

beauty  of  character  Carlyle  has  already  dis- 
covered that  he  is  unsatisfying.  Though  he 
struggles  stoutly  against  doubt,  puts  it 
aside  or  lives  manfully  in  spite  of  it,  he 
never  succeeds  in  resolving  it.  "Many  of  his 
later  poems  indicate  an  incessant  and  in- 
creasing longing  for  some  solution  of  the 
mystery  of  life;  at  times  it  is  a  gloomy 
resignation  to  the  want  and  the  despair  of 
any."  For  such  solution  Carlyle  discovered 
then  that  he  must  look  elsewhere.  Two 
sources  of  help  and  inspiration  are  already 
beginning  to  interest  him.  These  are  the 
poetry  of  Goethe  and  the  transcendental 
philosophy  of  Kant  and  his  followers. 

The  second  part  of  the  present  work  con- 
tains a  striking  contrast  between  Goethe  and 
Schiller.  The  one  is  like  Shakespeare,  the 
other  like  Milton ;  one  is  Catholic,  the  other 
sectarian ;  one  is  tolerant,  peaceful,  collected, 
the  other  is  earnest,  devoted,  intense,  "at 
war  with  the  one  half  of  things,  in  love  with 
the  other  half."  Where  Schiller  had  but 
battled  bravely,  Goethe  had  in  large  measure 
attained. 

The  later  essay  on  Schiller,  written  in 
1829,  is  not  a  mere  abstract  of  the  earlier 


62  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

life,  but  a  second  presentment  of  the  subject 
in  accordance  with  maturer  standards. 
Here,  Schiller's  life  is  treated  as  a  piece  of 
spiritual  history.  The  "high  purpose  after 
spiritual  perfection,"  which  is  the  true  end 
of  man's  life,  is  found  in  him  as  love  of 
poetry.  He  pursues  it  through  life  without 
wavering  and  unmixed  with  worldly  ambi- 
tion. He  does  not,  indeed,  ever  attain  to 
such  deep  wisdom  as  that  of  Goethe  or 
Shakespeare.  He  never  learns  to  discern  the 
miraculous  in  the  common,  or  to  find  poetry 
in  the  midst  of  prose.  He  does  not  possess 
that  sort  of  humor  which  "is  properly  the 
exponent  of  low  things ;  that  which  first 
renders  them  poetical  to  the  mind,"  but 
dwells  rather  upon  old  "conventionally- 
noble  themes."  Less  broad  in  his  interests 
than  Goethe,  his  life  is  nevertheless  highly 
instructive  from  the  very  intensity  and  sim- 
plicity of  its  purpose. 

Carlyle's  first  attempts  to  give  English- 
men some  knowledge  of  the  man  whom  he 
considered  the  greatest  genius  of  modern 
Europe  were  contained  in  the  translation  of 
Wilhelm  Meister  in  1824  and  the  volume  of 
German  Romance  in  1826.  Of  the  former 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  63 

book  we  know  that  Carlyle's  admiration  at 
this  time  was  by  no  means  unqualified.  Of 
the  latter  he  says  in  the  preface  that  it  was 
"not  of  my  suggesting  or  desiring,  but  of 
my  executing  as  honest  journeywork  in 
defect  of  better."  We  learn  from  the  letters 
that  it  was  done  with  pleasure  and  satisfac- 
tion, with  less  agonizing  perhaps  than  any 
other  of  his  books. 

The  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  Wil- 
helm  Meister  is  honest  and  straightforward. 
As  a  translator  Carlyle  lays  claim  only  to 
fidelity;  as  an  ultimate  object  he  seeks  to 
further  the  study  of  German  literature 
among  his  countrymen.  As  a  criticism  of 
Goethe  it  need  not  detain  us,  since  we  find 
it  so  soon  superseded  by  the  comment  in  the 
German  Romance. 

It  is  plain  from  the  latter  that  Goethe 
has  now  come  to  represent  for  Carlyle  the 
typical  modern  man  of  genius,  and  his  career 
and  works  to  furnish  the  best  image  of  that 
ideal  spiritual  life  which  it  is  the  highest 
mission  of  all  art  to  body  forth.  And  as 
attainment  is  seen  in  its  fullness  of  meaning 
only  as  the  crown  of  effort  and  the  conquest 
of  imperfection,  so  the  wisdom  of  Meister's 


64  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Travels  becomes  more  impressive  when  we 
understand  it  as  the  matured  product  of  the 
same  hand  whose  youth  expressed  itself  in 
the  waywardness  of  Gotz  von  BerliMngen 
and  The  Sorrows  of  Werther. 

That  Goethe  manifests  the  calmness, 
beauty  and  strength  that  come  from  victory 
after  severe  conflict,  that  his  rest  is  not  the 
result  of  surrender  but  of  conquest,  that  his 
is  a  mind  in  perfect  unity  with  itself,  these 
facts  constitute  the  first  reason  for  the  pre^ 
eminent  interest  which  Goethe  should  arouse 
in  us.  His  life  gives  to  the  modern  struggler 
and  doubter  the  inspiration  and  faith  that 
he  too  may  battle  successfully. 

Moreover,  the  life  and  works  of  Goethe 
have  an  immense  advantage  over  others  in 
that  they  belong  to  the  modern  world.  We 
find  reflected  in  him  the  science  and  the 
skepticism  of  the  age,  yet  joined  with 
poetry  and  imagination.  Every  age  requires 
that  its  spiritual  life  shall  be  reinterpreted 
in  terms  of  its  own,  in  order  to  be  continually 
effective.  By  doing  this  Goethe  has  proved 
that  faith  and  affirmation  belong  not  less 
to  the  modern  than  to  the  ancient  and 
medieval  world. 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  65 

That  Goethe's  final  message  is  a  positive 
one  constitutes  its  greatest  importance. 
"He  is  not  a  questioner  and  a  despiser,  but 
a  teacher  and  a  reverencer;  not  a  destroyer, 
but  a  builder-up;  not  a  wit  only,  but  a  wise 
man."  In  this  respect  he  contrasts  sharply 
with  Voltaire.  Here  we  have  already  the 
antithesis  which  Carlyle  was  to  develop  more 
and  more  fully  as  he  proceeded.  Goethe  and 
Voltaire  are  henceforth  to  constitute  for  him 
two  great  representative  types  of  the  modern 
intellect. 

It  is  evident  from  the  above  analysis  that 
Carlyle's  object  in  making  his  countrymen 
acquainted  with  Goethe  is  not  merely  that 
of  a  literary  critic.  The  message  is  one  of 
light  to  those  who  are  sitting  in  darkness, 
of  hope  and  salvation  to  men  in  despair. 
The  story  of  Goethe's  life  is  to  bring  inspira- 
tion, his  poetry  is  to  bring  peace.  As  in  the 
case  of  Schiller,  but  with  far  greater  satis- 
faction, we  are  to  estimate  the  life  and  the 
writings  together  as  the  progressive  reve- 
lation of  a  single  spirit;  literature  is  to  be 
interpreted  in  terms  of  life. 

Similarly  the  minor  German  novelists  are 
presented  to  us,  not,  like  Goethe,  as  com- 


66  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

pletely  rounded  men,  but  as  possessing  this 
or  that  spiritual  gift  of  value.  Among 
i  these  Richter  is  especially  significant.  He 
"'too  has  learned  to  look  upon  human  life 
with  an  understanding  of  its  vanities  and 
yet  with  love;  to  rejoice  in  man's  immor- 
tality ;  to  interpret  nature  in  terms  of  spirit ; 
"from  the  solemn  phases  of  the  starry 
heavens  to  the  simple  floweret  of  the  meadow, 
his  eye  and  his  heart  are  open  for  her  charms 
and  her  mystic  meanings."  The  description 
of  Hoffmann  is  equally  interesting  as  sug- 
gesting certain  traits  utilized  later  in  the 
creation  of  the  shaggy  oracle  of  Weiss- 
nicht-wo.  Taken  all  together  these  frag- 
ments of  the  German  novelists  are  offered 
as  a  contribution,  not  lofty,  but  of  genuine 
value,  to  the  study  of  man  and  nature.* 

The  first  essay  which  illustrates  Carlyle's 
mature  biographical  method  is  the  1828 
essay  on  Goethe.  From  this  point  of  view 
it  is  the  most  important  of  the  Critical  and 
Miscellaneous  Essays.  Here  Carlyle  at- 

a  In  a  note  to  the  discussion  of  Goethe,  Carlyle  first  intro- 
duces the  term  Philistine  into  English  literature.  His  off- 
hand explanation  of  it  as  descriptive  of  one  who  "judged  of 
poetry  as  he  judged  of  Brunswick  mum,  by  its  utility,"  con- 
nects it  with  the  mechanical  philosophy  of  Utilitarianism, 
which  he  was  to  oppose  so  vehemently  in  later  years. 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  67 

tempts  to  do  in  the  case  of  a  living  man,  the 
man  whose  life  has  furnished  the  most  satis- 
factory material  for  such  an  undertaking, 
exactly  what  he  tries  to  accomplish  in  the 
case  of  Sartor  with  typical  and  autobio- 
graphical material.  Goethe's  life  represents 
the  victorious  struggle  against  the  manifold 
spiritual  perplexities  of  modern  life.  Such 
a  struggle  "must  take  place,  more  or  less 
consciously,  in  every  character  that,  espe- 
cially in  these  times,  attains  to  spiritual 
manhood;  and  in  characters  possessing  any 
thoughtfulness  and  sensibility,  will  seldom 
take  place  without  a  too  painful  conscious- 
ness, without  bitter  conflicts,  in  which  the 
character  itself  is  too  often  maimed  and  im- 
poverished, and  which  end  too  often  not  in 
victory,  but  in  defeat,  or  fatal  compromise 
with  the  enemy." 

With  these  considerations  in  mind  Car- 
lyle's  problem  is  plain.  It  is  so  to  arrange 
the  facts  of  Goethe's  life  at  his  disposal  and 
so  to  present  the  substance  of  his  works  that 
this  spiritual  struggle  and  victory  with  the 
various  stages  in  which  progress  is  made  will 
become  clear  to  the  reader.  Accordingly  we 
find  the  essay  free  on  the  one  hand  from 


68  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

entertaining  biographical  gossip  and  on  the 
other  from  technical  literary  criticism.  It 
is  a  bit  of  spiritual  history  for  which  both 
life  and  works  are  used  as  documents.  Its 
more  important  passages  from  the  days  of 
Gotz  von  Berlichingen  and  Werther  to  those 
of  Dichtwng  wnd  Wahrheit  and  Meister's 
Wander jahre  are  accordingly  delineated 
from  this  point  of  view. 

Carlyle  begins  the  essay  on  Burns  with  a 
criticism  of  the  earlier  biographers.  The 
usual  fault  has  been  to  present  us  "with  a 
detached  catalogue  of  his  several  supposed 
attributes,  virtues  and  vices,  instead  of  a 
delineation  of  the  resulting  character  as  a 
living  unity."  The  true  biography  should 
aim  on  the  other  hand  to  acquaint  us  "with 
all  the  inward  springs  and  relations"  of 
the  character  whose  life  is  studied.  So  far 
as  it  is  possible,  therefore,  in  a  short  sketch 
Carlyle  attempts  to  penetrate  into  the  cen- 
tral meaning  of  Burns'  life,  and  to  discover 
the  causes  of  his  success  and  his  failure. 

The  chief  trouble  with  Burns  Carlyle  finds 
to  reside  in  the  lack  of  clear  unity  of  aim. 
The  poet  has  great  gifts  of  insight,  of  sin- 
cerity, of  love,  but  he  fails  to  consecrate 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  69 

them  to  a  single  high  purpose.  His  life  is, 
therefore,  one  of  fragments.  Instead  of 
making  a  clear  choice,  he  strives  to  reconcile 
the  irreconcilable,  "to  mingle  in  friendly 
union  the  common  spirit  of  the  world  with 
the  spirit  of  poetry."  This  is  only  another 
way  of  saying  that  Burns  has  not  performed 
'what  we  have  seen  elsewhere  to  be  the  first 
^reat  step  toward  right  life,  the  act  of  self- 
renunciation.  "He  would  be  happy,  not 
actively  and  in  himself,  but  passively  and 
from  some  ideal  cornucopia  of  Enjoyments, 
not  earned  by  his  own  labour,  but  showered 
on  him  by  the  beneficence  of  Destiny."  The 
poet  especially  must  be  capable  of  the  heroic 
life.  He  has  no  right  to  expect  kindness 
from  his  age,  "but  is  rather  bound  to  do  it 
great  kindness."  Burns'  failure,  therefore, 
was  an  internal  and  not  an  external  one,  "it 
is  his  inward,  not  his  outward  misfortunes 
that  bring  him  to  the  dust." 

The  interest  which  attaches  to  the  char- 
acter of  Voltaire  is  not  that  of  struggle  and 
development,  but  of  representative  quality. 
"He  rises  before  us  as  the  paragon  and 
epitome  of  a  whole  spiritual  period,"  a 
period  of  intellect  divorced  from  sympathy, 


70  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

of  wit  without  wisdom,  of  persiflage.  He  is, 
therefore,  no  complete  man  like  Goethe,  but 
the  great  exponent  of  an  age  of  division. 
He  is  the  great  Persifleur,  lacking  in  ear- 
nestness, sympathy,  reverence,  and  therefore 
without  the  deepest  insight ;  does  not  possess 
what  Ruskin  called  "heartsight,"  but  only 
eyesight ;  Truth  of  the  deepest  sort  is,  there- 
fore, hidden  from  him.  His  faculty  is  chiefly 
one  of  ridicule  and  denial,  rather  than  of 
affirmation  and  construction.  On  the  other 
hand,  unlike  Burns,  he  is  not  divided  in  his 
aim ;  he  possesses  unity  with  himself,  so  that 
he  ends  in  a  great  blaze  of  success.  Carlyle 
leaves  us,  however,  with  the  feeling  that 
Burns,  whose  life  was  a  struggle  ending  in 
failure,  was  a  nobler  man  than  Voltaire, 
whose  life  was  an  almost  unimpeded  triumph. 
The  lack  of  struggle  is,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  in  itself  the  proof  of  lack  of  the  poetic 
nature.  It  is  the  curse  laid  upon  every  poet 
that  he  must  endure  spiritual  torment,  for  he 
is  called  upon  to  "struggle  from  the  little- 
ness and  obstruction  of  an  Actual  world,  into 
the  freedom  and  infinitude  of  an  Ideal,"  and 
the  history  of  this  struggle  is  the  history  of 
his  life.  Men  like  Voltaire  do  not  truly  hear 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  71 

this  call  at  all,  men  like  Burns  and  Byron 
hear  it,  but  have  not  strength  to  follow  it 
wholly.  It  is  only  the  greatest,  men  like 
Goethe  and  Schiller,  who  hear  it  clearly  and 
follow  it  resolutely.  Our  age  is  an  age  of 
Halfness,  of  "halting  between  two  opinions," 
uncertain  whether  to  compound  with  God  or 
the  devil.  The  lives  of  such  men  as  Schiller 
and  Goethe  are,  therefore,  of  peculiar  impor- 
tance to  us. 

These  four  men,  Voltaire,  the  skeptic; 
Burns,  the  noble  failure;  Schiller,  the  lofty 
radiant  spirit;  Goethe,  the  profound, 
broadly  human  sage,  are  four  great  repre- 
sentative types  of  the  human  spirit,  and 
together  may  indicate  to  us  the  ideal  human 
life  as  it  exists  under  modern  conditions. 
It  only  remained  to  select  the  most  essential 
elements  in  them,  to  interpret  these  in  the 
light  of  an  intense  personal  struggle,  and 
to  present  their  abstract  as  the  typical 
manly  life  of  our  perplexing  age.  This  was 
to  be  the  work  of  Sartor  Resartus. 

But  the  biographical  second  book  of  Sar- 
tor had  its  forerunners  in  two  different  sorts 
of  writing  in  the  early  period.  The  first  was 
analytic,  a  series  of  studies  which  attempted 


72  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

to  probe  the  motive  impulses  and  display 
their  operation  in  the  lives  of  such  men  as 
most  significantly  interpreted  the  contem- 
porary life.  These  form  the  biographical 
studies  which  we  have  been  examining.  The 
other  was  synthetic,  an  attempt  to  set  forth 
the  eternal  truth  concerning  the  life  of  man 
in  conflict  with  the  world  in  forms  of  the 
higher  creative  imagination.  The  first 
appearance  of  Carlyle's  interest  in  the  writ- 
ing of  fiction  is  in  the  letter  of  1822,  out- 
lining the  plan  of  a  novel  to  be  written  in 
collaboration.  The  only  actual  attempt  of 
this  sort  before  Sartor,  with  the  exception 
of  an  unimportant  sketch  contributed  to 
Fraser's  Magazine?  is  the  unfinished  novel 
of  Wotton  Reinfred.  One  of  the  critical 
essays,  however,  first  deserves  attention. 

The  first  published  passage  in  which  Car- 
lyle  clearly  sets  forth  as  typical  the  essential 
elements  involved  in  the  struggle  presented 
in  Sartor  Resartus  occurs  in  the  essay  on 
Goethe's  Helena.  In  the  earlier  part  of  this 
essay  the  drama  of  Faust  is  sketched.  We 
have  on  the  one  hand  Mephistopheles  repre- 
senting the  spirit  of  Denial,  "perfect  Under- 

a  Cruthers  and  Johnson,  Fraser's  Magazine,  January,  1831. 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  73 

standing  with  perfect  Selfishness,"  the  Ever- 
lasting No  of  Sartor.  On  the  other  hand 
we  have  Faust  representing  the  spirit  of 
Inquiry  and  Endeavor,  a  man  of  infinite 
aspiration,  persuaded  that  he  is  destined  to 
achieve  that  lofty  happiness  for  which  he  is 
ready  to  sacrifice  all  lower  forms  of  pleasure, 
quitting  the  ways  of  vulgar  men  but  unable 
to  find  the  true  light,  moved  always  by 
pride,  love  of  power  and  love  of  self.  In 
Faust  there  is  no  such  triumphant,  issue  as 
in  Sartor,  but  the  opposing  elements  in  the 
struggle  are  essentially  the  same. 

Wot  ton  Reinfred  follows  in  general  the 
lines  indicated  by  Carlyle  in  the  letter  to 
Miss  Welsh  of  December,  1822.  Wotton  is 
Carlyle  in  exceedingly  thin  disguise,  his 
parents  are  Carlyle's  parents,  and  Jane 
Montagu,  while  to  some  extent  similar  in 
circumstances  to  Margaret  Gordon,  is  more 
emphatically  Jane  Welsh.  Wotton,  like 
Carlyle,  cannot  remember  ever  having  been 
unable  to  read.  Like  Carlyle,  he  is  a  "timid 
still  boy,"  tormented  by  his  school  fellows, 
and  passing  for  a  bookworm  and  a  coward 
until  he  flashes  forth  in  a  rage  of  fearless 
uncontrolled  anger.  His  early  life  is  sad- 


74  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

dened  by  the  loss  of  a  sister.  He  enters  the 
university  with  boundless  hopes,  most  of 
them  doomed  to  disappointment.  Mathe- 
matics takes  the  first  strong  hold  upon  him, 
but  he  soon  discovers  that  his  "spiritual 
nature  is  not  fed"  by  this  study.  He  turns 
to  philosophy,  reads  the  French  skeptics  and 
the  philosophy  of  Epicurus,  but  remains  dis- 
satisfied. He  meditates  various  professions 
and  even  attempts  that  of  law.  Disgusted 
with  its  technicalities  and  doubtful  of  its 
value,  he  abandons  this  pursuit  and  hurries 
into  the  country,  where  he  undergoes  a 
period  of  spiritual  torment  and  struggle, 
wandering  "in  endless  labyrinths  of  doubt, 
or  in  the  void  darkness  of  denial."  Then 
come  the  new  hope  inspired  by  his  love  for 
Jane  Montagu,*  and  the  disillusionment  that 
follows  her  enforced  separation  from  him. 
His  first  desperation  consequent  upon  this 
incident  gives  way  at  last  to  an  "iron 
quietude"  and  the  thought  occurs  to  him 
which  Carlyle  imputes  later  to  Teufelsdrockh 
and  to  Dante:  "Destiny  itself  cannot  doom 
us  not  to  die." 

a  The  relation  of  Jane  Montagu  to  the  Blumine  of  Sartor 
Resartus  is  fully  treated  by  Professor  McMechan  in  the  intro- 
duction to  his  edition  of  that  book. 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  75 

At  the  opening  of  the  story  we  find 
Wotton  in  this  not  altogether  comfortable 
condition,  a  skeptic  longing  for  belief,  a 
passionate  lover  of  good  but  uncertain  as 
to  what  good  is,  desiring  to  act  but  with  all 
his  powers  of  action  paralyzed  by  unbelief. 
His  friends,  aware  of  his  capabilities  and 
solicitous  for  his  welfare,  plan  to  take  him 
on  a  journey  with  the  hope  of  diverting  his 
mind  from  its  broodings  by  action.  W'otton 
readily  agrees,  and  the  story  from  this  time 
on  to  the  end  of  the  seventh  chapter,  where 
the  narrative  was  dropped,  is,  for  the  most 
part,  an  account  of  the  hero's  wanderings, 
meditations  and  conversations.  In  the  sixth 
chapter  Jane  Montagu  appears  again,  and 
a  very  promising  villain  is  introduced  in  the 
shape  of  Captain  Walter,  a  former  rival 
contestant  for  the  hand  of  Jane  Montagu. 

The  story  is  almost  entirely  innocent  of 
plot  and  suffers  far  more  from  division  of 
purpose  than  does  Sartor  Resartus.  Carlyle 
evidently  expects  to  make  the  usual  conces- 
sions to  the  demand  for  romance,  intrigue, 
and  complication  of  plot,  but  lacks  both  the 
interest  and  the  power  of  invention  neces- 
sary to  accomplish  this  purpose.  There  is 


76  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

not  a  trace  of  humor  and  little  contrast  in 
character  drawing.  All  the  characters  are 
in  deadly  earnest,  most  of  them  represent 
some  phase  or  other  of  Carlyle's  own  char- 
acter, and  a  majority  are  afflicted  with  a 
morbid  tendency  to  introspection  and  a  con- 
suming desire  to  find  an  answer  to  the 
"happiness-question."  Their  conversation  is 
wanting  in  flexibility  and  is  always  painfully 
serious  and  anxious.  Much  of  it  takes  place 
in  a  mysterious  House  of  the  Wolds,  a 
strange  hotbed  of  dissatisfied  philosophers, 
who  contend  for  the  opposing  merits  of 
Kant  and  Epicurus  over  their  eggs  and 
coffee.  We  are  treated  to  much  lofty  dis- 
course, but  the  shadow  and  sunshine  of  the 
common  human  life,  which  we  are  accustomed 
to  look  for  in  the  modern  novel  dealing  with 
contemporary  material,  is  wholly  lacking. 
The  book  does  not  contain  a  single  feature 
necessary  to  success  in  this  field. 

As  a  book  of  personal  philosophy  and  as 
an  anticipation  of  the  author's  later  work, 
it  is  far  more  interesting.  Most  of  the  chief 
tenets  of  Carlyle's  philosophy  appear  in 
some  form.  We  hear  nothing  of  Hero- 
Worship,  but  the  gospels  of  work,  of  the 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  77 

renunciation  of  happiness,  of  the  necessity 
of  belief  and  of  the  hatred  of  cant,  are  all 
prominent.  The  style  is  that  of  the  early 
essays,  but  many  sentences  were  extracted, 
with  or  without  change,  for  use  in  the  later 
writings.8  The  conversation  is  largely 
given  over  to  philosophical  discussion  and 
often  turns  into  sermonizing  and  monologue, 
as  Carlyle's  and  Coleridge's  own  conversa- 
tion was  only  too  likely  to  do.  No  novel  is 
to  be  nourished  on  such  fare,  nor  did  Carlyle 
willingly  turn  back  from  such  congenial 
writing  to  the  necessity  of  forwarding  his 
plot  and  humanizing  his  characters.  More- 
over, as  the  outline  given  will  show,  he  fol- 
lowed the  facts  of  his  own  life  too  slavishly. 
Wotton  Reinfred,  if  for  no  other  reason,  is 
interesting  as  evidence  of  Carlyle's  entire 
unfitness  for  the  writing  of  fiction. 

A  word  must  be  said  in  conclusion  concern- 
ing the  relation  of  Carlyle's  studies  in  spirit- 
ual biography  and  their  culmination  in  the 

a  Compare,  for  instance,  the  following  sentence  with  the 
similar  passages  in  History  and  the  chapter  on  Natural  Super- 
naturalism  in  Sartor:  "  'The  Book  of  Nature,'  said  Wotton, 
'is  written  in  such  strange  intertwisted  characters,  that  you 
may  spell  from  among  them  a  few  words  in  any  alphabet, 
but  to  read  the  whole  is  for  omniscience  alone.'  " 


\ 


78  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

semi-autobiographical  second  book  of  Sartor 
to  other  romantic  autobiographical  fiction 
of  similar  character.  Goethe  of  course  fur- 
nished the  most  important  model.  Carlyle 
attempted,  first  in  Wotton  Reinfred  and 
afterwards  in  Sartor,  to  compress  into  a 
single  volume  the  essence  of  the  various 
phases  of  the  spiritual  struggle  presented  in 
Goethe's  Werther  (1774),  Meister's  Lehr- 
jahre  (1795)  and  Meister's  Wander  jahre 
(1821).  Teufelsdrockh  passes  through 
Werther's  melancholy  and  sentimentalism 
to  emerge  at  last  victorious,  having  learned 
the  lesson  of  abnegation  which  Meister  had 
taught  him. 

Carlyle's  earlier  biographical  studies  had 
already  suggested  to  him  the  four  main 
romantic  elements  which  characterize  the 
autobiographical  portion  of  Sartor.  These 
are,  it  seems  to  me,  four  in  number :  melan- 
choly unrest  or  discontentment ;  struggle ; 
the  quest  after  an  ideal;  symbolic  or  repre- 
sentative character.  A  romantic  work, 
according  to  a  recent  definition,  "is  a  record 
of  exploration  in  the  realm  of  the  material, 
the  mental  or  the  spiritual,  in  search  of  an 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  79 

ideal."*     In  this  sense  Sartor  is  essentially 
romantic. 

The  melancholy  unrest  or  discontentment 
which  characterizes  Teufelsdrockh,  and  in  a 
more  exaggerated  way  Wotton  Reinfred,  was 
typical  of  Carlyle's  age  and  has  been  called 
the  mat  du  siecle.  Goethe  had  found  it  in 
Rousseau's  Nouvelle  Heloise  and  Confessions 
and  gives  copious  expression  to  it  in  Weriher. 
It  was  increased  by  the  political  and  social 
unrest  which  followed  the  French  Revolution 
and  was  beginning  to  find  expression  in  the 
rising  French  romantic  school.  Alfred  de 
Musset's  autobiographical  romance,  La  Con- 
fession d'un  Enfant  du  Siecle  (1837),  is  a 
product  of  conditions  in  France  comparable 
with  those  at  work  in  England  and  influenc- 
ing Carlyle.  Both  Schiller  and  the  youthful 
Goethe  clearly  exhibit  this  trait  of  unrest. 
The  quest  after  an  ideal,  often  baffling  or 
unattainable,  is  another  not  uncommon  fea- 
ture of  nineteenth  century  romantic  litera- 
ture. The  typical  example  is  The  Blue 
Flower  of  Novalis,  an  author  who  exercised 
an  early  and  lasting  influence  on  Carlyle. 

a  F.   H.    Stoddard,   The  Evolution   of  the  English  Novel, 
page  132. 


80  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

Professor  Beers  has  pointed  out  repetitions 
of  this  idea  in  Lowell,  Whittier,  Emerson 
and  others.  In  Sartor  its  influence  is  espe- 
cially apparent  in  the  chapter  called  Sor- 
rows of  Teufelsdrockh.  Carlyle  looked  upon 
Goethe's  life  as  such  an  ideal  quest,  issuing 
in  triumphant  success.  The  element  of 
struggle,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Carlyle 
considered  unavoidable  in  the  noble  modern 
life,  and  which  he  found  amply  illustrated  in 
the  lives  of  the  great  Germans,  and  the 
symbolic  and  representative  character  which 
he  wished  to  give  to  both  Wotton  Reinfred 
and  Sartor,  constitute  the  other  clearly 
marked  romantic  traits  of  these  books.  It 
is  especially  in  the  last  characteristic  that 
Sartor  differs  not  only  from  the  methods  of 
the  eighteenth  century  writers  of  fiction,  but 
from  such  nineteenth  century  autobiograph- 
ical fiction  as  Bulwer's  The  Caxtons  (1849) 
and  My  Novel  (1853),  Dickens'  David  Cop- 
per field  (1849-51),  and  Borrow's  Lavengro 
(1851)  and  Romany  Rye  (1857).  Carlyle 
makes  little  use  of  such  picturesque  material 
as  interested  these  writers,  and  prefers  the 
a  priori  method.  He  writes  his  story  to 


SPIRITUAL  HISTORY  81 

illustrate    a    preconceived    idea    of    general 
application. 

It  is  also  this  desire  to  delineate  the  typical 
and  ideal  modern  life  as  a  means  for  edifica- 
tion, that  separates  Carlyle's  biographical 
method  from  that  more  commonly  in  vogue 
since  the  production  of  Boswell's  Johnson, 
the  aim  of  which  was  to  present  a  vivid  and 
intimate  picture  of  the  individual  man.  Car- 
lyle  fully  appreciated  the  merits  of  this 
great  work  and  of  its  much  maligned  author, 
but  he  had  no  intention  of  becoming  a  Bos- 
well.  It  is  true  that  in  Cromwell  he  faith- 
fully subordinated  his  own  very  definite 
opinion  of  his  hero  to  the  evidence  of  the 
actual  letters  and  speeches,  and  that  in  gen- 
eral his  power  of  vivid  portraiture  is  unex- 
celled. But  he  believed  it  the  primary  duty 
of  a  biographer  to  interpret  as  well  as  to 
present  a  life.  The  ultimate  purpose  of  the 
second  book  of  Sartor  Resartus  and  that  of 
the  1828  essay  on  Goethe  are  identical,  and 
Carlyle's  interest  in  each  form  of  writing 
helps  us  in  no  small  degree  to  understand  the 
principle  of  selection  which  governed  the 
composition  of  the  other. 


IV 

THE  TIMES 

The  more  intensely  interested  a  man 
becomes  in  the  needs  of  his  own  times,  the 
less  intent  is  he  likely  to  become  upon  the 
calm  enunciation  of  universal  truth  and  the 
more  on  the  vital  utterance  of  that  partic- 
ular side  or  aspect  of  truth  which  seems  to 
be  needed  at  the  moment.  He  becomes  less 
of  a  philosopher  and  more  of  a  prophet. 
Carlyle  passed  through  this  change.  Toward 
the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  found  himself 
little  moved  by  transcendental  distinctions, 
was  even  ready  to  call  it  all  "moonshine," 
but  he  became  more  and  more  vehement  in 
his  objurgations  against  sham  and  his  rec- 
ommendations of  sincerity  and  hero-worship. 

In  one  sense,  however,  all  his  writings, 
from  the  very  beginning,  may  be  said  to 
have  had  a  practical  application  in  mind. 
The  letters,  the  prefaces  and  the  essays 
themselves  show  us  that  the  German  litera- 
ture which  Carlyle  was  devoting  himself  to 
making  known  in  England,  was  looked  upon 


THE  TIMES  83 

as  medicative  and  restorative,  a  needed  anti- 
dote to  the  materialism  and  skepticism  of 
English  literature  and  philosophy.  Locke 
had  paved  the  way  "for  banishing  religion 
from  the  world."  Voltaire  had  furthered 
the  same  cause  in  France.  Germany  alone 
still  retained  a  faith  in  the  Invisible.  Goethe, 
Schiller,  Richter,  Novalis,  still  held  fast  to 
this  faith.  Knowledge  of  these  writers  is  the 
first  step  to  removing  the  incubus  of  unbelief 
from  the  rest  of  Europe.  "To  judge  from 
the  signs  of  the  times,"  Carlyle  had  said  in 
the  preface  to  German  Romance,  "this  gen- 
eral diffusion  of  German  among  us  seems  a 
consummation  not  far  distant.  As  an  indi- 
vidual I  cannot  but  anticipate  from  it  some 
little  evil  and  much  good." 

By  1827  he  had  begun  to  analyze  his  age, 
and  to  look  upon  it  as  a  critical  period  in 
the  world's  history.  His  view  of  it,  how- 
ever, was  so  far  an  optimistic  one.  In  the 
essay  on  German  Literature  he  speaks  of  his 
time  as  an  era  of  promise  and  threatening, 
in  which  "many  elements  of  good  and  evil 
are  everywhere  in  conflict."  The  rapid 
material  advance  characteristic  of  the  cen- 
tury seems  on  the  whole  beneficial.  "The 


84  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

commerce  in  material  things  has  paved  roads 
for  commerce  in  things  spiritual,  and  a  true 
thought,  or  a  noble  creation,  passes  lightly 
to  us  from  remotest  countries,  provided  only 
our  minds  be  open  to  receive  it."  An  elo- 
quent and  still  more  optimistic  passage 
closes  the  essay.  In  spite  of  religious  uncer- 
tainty we  may  be  assured  that  Religion  and 
Poetry  are  not  dead;  that  they  are  "eternal 
as  the  being  of  man."  Even  amid  the  triv- 
ialities of  every-day  life  we  are  striving  as 
best  we  may  to  catch  "tidings  from  loftier 
worlds."  "Meanwhile  the  first  condition  of 
success  is,  that,  in  striving  honestly  our- 
selves, we  honestly  acknowledge  the  striving 
of  our  neighbor;  that  with  a  will  unwearied 
in  seeking  Truth,  we  have  a  Sense  open  for 
it,  wheresoever  and  howsoever  it  may  arise." 
A  similar  plea  for  "tolerant  and  sober 
investigation"  of  foreign  thought,  especially 
of  the  so-called  German  mysticism,  closes 
the  essay  on  Novalis.  Whatever  its  aber- 
rations, Carlyle  feels  that  mysticism  will 
prove  superior  to  the  "Coffin-and-Gas-Phil- 
osophy"  which  it  opposes.  He  agrees  with 
Jean  Paul  that  "our  present  time  is  indeed 
a  criticising  and  critical  time,"  but  trusts  in 


THE  TIMES  85 

spite  of  this  that  it  will  find  some  issue  out 
of  all  its  perplexities. 

The  spirit  of  this  closing  paragraph  of 
Novalis  finds  ampler  expression  in  the  next 
essay  on  Signs  of  the  Times.  From  some 
points  of  view  this  is  the  most  important  of 
the  early  essays.  It  is  Carlyle's  first  broad 
and  full  discussion  of  the  needs  of  his  age, 
its  disease  and  the  remedy  to  be  applied. 
It  contains  the  germinal  thought  of  all  his 
later  work,  and  looks  forward  not  only  to 
Sartor,  but  to  Past  and  Present  and  the 
Latterday  Pamphlets.  It  attracted  atten- 
tion, if  not  widely,  at  any  rate  in  quarters 
where  it  was  likely  to  bring  forth  fruit. 
The  St.  Simonians,  as  we. have  seen,  began 
to  look  upon  Carlyle  as  a  spiritual  leader, 
and  "disciplekins"  in  London  to  express  their 
belief  in  him;  while  Lowell  dates  the  rise  of 
Transcendentalism  in  New  England  from  1 
the  appearance  of  Signs  of  the  Times  and 
History.  In  his  discussion  of  mechanism 
Carlyle  sounded  a  note  which  has  been  echoed 
by  all  the  great  didactic  essayists  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

The  essay  possesses  a  high  degree  of  unity 
and  is  simply  expressed.     The  age  is  a  criti- 


86  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

cal  one,  and  is  everywhere  recognized  as 
such.  As  distinguished  from  other  ages,  it 
may  be  designated  as  the  Mechanical  Age 
or  Age  of  Machinery.  This  mechanical 
character  may  be  discerned  not  only  in  the 
great  increase  of  machinery  in  industry  but 
in  the  elaborate  organization  in  all  branches 
of  thought  and  life,  social,  scientific,  reli- 
gious, philosophical  and  literary.  The 
dominion  of  Mechanism,  if  made  absolute, 
cannot  but  end  in  disaster.  The  renovation 
of  society  can  come  only  through  a  return 
to  faith  in  Dynamics,  by  which  is  meant  "the 
primary,  unmodified  forces  and  energies  of 
man,  the  mysterious  springs  of  Love,  and 
Fear,  and  Wonder,  of  Enthusiasm,  Poetry, 
Religion." 

In  speaking  of  the  relation  of  Signs  of 
the  Times  to  the  period  in  which  it  was  writ- 
ten, it  may  be  premised  that  the  essay  was 
to  some  extent  an  outcome  of  Carlyle's 
anxious  and  apprehensive  temperament  as 
well  as  of  external  conditions.  Professor 
Masson,  in  his  Life  of  Chatterton,  makes  the 
remark  that  every  age  is  likely  to  look  upon 
itself  as  an  especially  critical  one.  Whether 
or  not  this  be  true,  it  is  certain  that  men  of 


THE  TIMES  87 

Carlyle's  disposition  are  wont  to  find  a  crisis 
impending  under  whatever  conditions  they 
may  be  placed.  The  author  of  the  Signs  of 
the  Times  is  the  same  Carlyle  who  almost 
forty  years  later  wrote:  "There  probably 
never  was  since  the  Heptarchy  ended,  or 
almost  since  it  began,  so  hugely  critical  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  England  as  this  we 
have  now  entered  upon."a  On  the  other 
hand,  in  several  important  ways  this  essay 
is  an  expression  of  the  thought  current  in 
1829.  It  appeared  during  a  period  of 
anxious  and  excited  thought  and  discussion, 
at  the  very  height  of  the  Reform  movement 
which  began  soon  after  the  close  of  the 
French  Revolution  in  1815.  1829  was  the 
year  of  the  Catholic  Emancipation  Act;  in 
the  previous  year  the  Test  Act,  admitting 
dissenters  to  public  offices,  had  become  law ; 
three  years  later  the  great  Reform  Bill, 
already  warmly  debated  in  parliament,  was 
passed.  England,  indeed,  owing  to  the  rapid 
advance  accomplished  through  the  French 
Revolution,  had  been  outstripped  in  political 
progress  by  the  continental  nations.  It  was 
inevitable  that  a  radical  revision  and  mod- 

a  Shooting  Niagara;  and  After?     1867. 


88  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

ernization  of  her  institutions  should  take 
place,  and  Englishmen  by  1829  had  begun 
to  realize  that  these  changes  were  revolu- 
tionary in  character.  This  gave  rise  to  an 
anxiously  critical  spirit  and  to  alternating 
optimism  and  pessimism.  Throughout  the 
whole  period  the  demands  of  the  working 
people  were  becoming  more  and  more  insist- 
ent. The  Luddite  riots  of  1811-1819,  the 
Peterloo  massacre  of  1819,  the  Corn  law 
agitation  of  1825-1846  and  the  Chartist 
Movement  of  1832,  are  symptoms  of  the 
general  progress.  Not  only  Signs  of  the 
Times  but  Characteristics,  Sartor  Resartiis, 
Chartism  and  Past  and  Present  are  to  be 
read  in  the  light  of  these  events. 

In  October,  1825,  the  Quarterly  Review 
had  spoken  of  the  condition  of  England  as 
"a  singular  if  not  a  critical  state  of  things," 
in  which  "engines  of  great  power,  for  good 
or  ill,  are  set  in  action,"  but  had  found  sat- 
isfaction in  an  "almost  universal  peace 
abroad,  and  a  more  than  common  content- 
ment at  home."  In  June,  1826,  the  same 
periodical  indulges  in  a  eulogy  of  England, 
rejoicing  in  her  prosperity  and  prospect  of 
future  greatness.  In  accordance  with  the 


THE  TIMES  89 

tendency  of  the  period  to  apply  a  nickname 
it  speaks  of  the  time  as  "the  age  of  indus- 
try," "the  age  of  comfort  to  the  poor,"  and 
"the  age  of  the  people." 

By  April,  1829,  however,  the  Quarterly 
has  changed  its  tune.  An  article  on  the 
State  and  Prospects  of  the  Country  makes 
careful  examination  of  England's  condition. 
Causes  of  discontent  are  found  in  the  heavy 
burdens  of  public  debt  and  the  poor  rates, 
in  the  redundancy  of  the  population,  and  in 
the  raising  of  undue  pretensions  owing  to 
past  prosperity.  "Symptoms  now  and  then 
appear,"  it  says,  "which  look  as  if  all  were 
wearing  out,  and  the  present  order  of  things 
were  verging  to  one  of  those  great  changes 
to  which  all  sublunary  affairs  are  subject." 

Blackwood's  for  July,  1829,  finds  no  small 
cause  for  amusement  in  this  sudden  right- 
about of  the  Quarterly.  It  undertakes,  how- 
ever, to  examine  the  causes  of  the  "bitter 
misery"  of  the  population  on  its  own  account 
and  among  others  adds  overtrading,  bad 
harvests,  the  corn  laws  and  the  increase  of 
machinery,  to  those  discovered  by  the  Quar- 
terly. In  the  September  following  Black- 
wood's  points  out  the  coexistence  of  immod- 


90  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

erate  luxury  among  the  aristocracy  with 
unexampled  misery  among  the  laboring 
classes,  the  latter  largely  due  to  the  read- 
justment made  necessary  by  the  great 
increase  of  machinery.  In  October,  1830,  an 
article  on  The  Present  Crisis  repeats  the 
judgment  of  the  Quarterly.  "In  no  period 
of  modern  times  has  the  settled  order  of 
things  appeared  to  be  so  extensively  under 
the  influence  of  desire  for  change."  The 
author  of  this  article  likewise  finds  the  use 
of  machinery  raising  a  "very  vital  question." 
In  December,  1830,  Blackwood's  attempts 
once  more  to  analyze  the  "Spirit  of  the 
Age,"  an  undertaking  which  "absorbs,  at 
present,  the  attention  of  the  world." 
According  to  this  writer  the  spirit  of  the 
age  is  one  of  social  and  political  discontent 
manifesting  itself  among  the  people  and 
demanding  certain  reforms,  chief  among 
which  are  republican  form  of  government, 
reduction  of  taxes,  of  pensions  and  sinecures, 
and  of  church  property,  repeal  of  the  corn 
laws,  and  parliamentary  reform. 

A  similar  feeling  of  anxiety  or  distrust 
had  been  expressed  by  The  Athenceum  in 
January,  1828.  In  spite  of  the  unexampled 


THE  TIMES  91 

progress  "in  everything  connected  with  the 
senses"  it  doubts  "whether  we  have  advanced 
at  all  proportionably  in  those  higher  and 
interior  qualities  which  are  of  infinitely  more 
importance  towards  the  perfection  of  each 
individual  nature,  but  display  themselves  far 
less  definitely  by  outward  and  calculable 
manifestations."  The  AtTienceum  proposes 
to  watch  "the  signs  of  the  times"  as  they  . 
appear  in  contemporary  writers.  All  this  is 
somewhat  in  Carlyle's  own  vein.  In  a  later 
number  of  the  magazine  the  same  writer 
deprecates  the  tendency  of  a  large  class  of 
literary  men  "to  seek  the  moral  amelioration 
of  mankind  by  the  pursuit  or  diffusion 
of  the  merely  physical  or  mathematical 
sciences." 

It  was  natural  that  the  use  of  machinery 
should  occupy  a  large  share  of  men's 
thoughts.  It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  how 
rapidly  the  industrial  age  had  arisen.  For 
centuries  men  had  been  content  to  till  their 
fields  and  weave  their  cloth  in  the  ways  that 
their  fathers  had  taught  them.  Suddenly 
toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  a 
marvelous  series  of  mechanical  inventions 
began  to  appear  and  to  revolutionize  every 


92  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

industry.  The  inauguration  of  the  factory 
system  resulted  in  the  most  conspicuous  fea- 
tures of  modern  society,  the  growth  of  great 
manufacturing  towns,  the  appearance  of  the 
capitalist  class,  the  consequent  dependence 
of  the  workman  upon  the  capitalist,  the 
increased  employment  of  men  and  women  in 
manufacturing,  and  the  vast  expansion  of 
commerce.  This  great  industrial  revolution 
began  in  England  and  advanced  most 
rapidly  there.  During  the  twenty-five  years 
which  preceded  the  publication  of  The 
French  Revolution  the  number  of  power 
looms  in  England  increased  from  twenty- 
four  hundred  to  one  hundred  thousand. 
The  magazines,  as  we  have  seen,  made  the 
use  of  machinery  a  frequent  topic  of  dis- 
cussion. Sometimes  they  found  it  a  cause 
of  anxiety,  sometimes  of  rejoicing.  Prac- 
tically all  of  these  discussions  were  economic 
in  character;  most  of  them  considered  the 
causes  of  alarm  to  reside  in  the  misery  which 
machinery  might  bring  to  the  working 
classes,  and  through  their  discontent  upon 
the  upper  classes. 

The  feeling  of  depression  due  to  the  sense 
of  various  impending  crises  was  deepened  by 


THE  TIMES  93 

the  dark  outlook  in  the  field  of  literary 
enterprise.  The  great  poets  were  all  dead 
or  had  ended  their  poetical  careers.  Byron, 
Keats  and  Shelley  had  passed  away.  Crabbe 
and  Scott  had  ceased  to  write  poetry. 
Wordsworth's  inspiration  was  gone,  Southey 
was  writing  prose,  Coleridge  was  "involved 
in  an  eternal  maze  of  metaphysics";  thus 
Fraser's  Magazine  laments  the  decay  of 
poetry.  Various  reasons  were  assigned  for 
this,  the  social  and  political  disturbances, 
the  interest  in  economics  and  physical 
science ;  it  seemed  doubtful  to  some  whether 
the  muse  would  ever  lift  her  head  again. 
"When  the  Pelion  of  political  economy  is 
piled  upon  the  Ossa  of  scientific  research, 
surmounted  with  a  pagoda  of  four-volumed 
fashionable  novels,  it's  time  for  the  invaded 
deities  to  betake  them  to  earth,  and  become 
(or  appear)  'of  the  earth  earthy,'  or  perish 
utterly."* 

Finally,  the  great  scientific  advance  in  the 
eighteenth  century  had  resulted  in  a  more 
liberal  and  enlightened  religious  spirit.  At 
the  same  time  the  apparently  solid  founda- 
tions of  religious  belief  had  in  many  cases 

a  Fraser's  Magazine,  December,  1834. 


94  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

been  shaken,  and  thousands  of  thoughtful 
men  had  become  troubled  and  doubtful. 
The  natural  tendency  to  materialism  conse- 
quent on  the  introduction  of  mechanism 
united  with  the  rationalistic  and  skeptical 
thought  largely  imported  from  France. 
The  English  deists  of  the  early  eighteenth 
century  had  been  followed  by  the  skepticism 
of  Voltaire,  the  atheism  of  Diderot  and  the 
Encyclopaedists,  and  the  sentimental  deism 
of  Rousseau.  On  the  other  hand,  a  devoutly 
religious  spirit,  though  dependent  less  upon 
authority  than  upon  reason  and  intuition, 
made  its  appearance  in  Germany  in  Kant, 
Novalis,  Richter,  and  other  transcendent- 
alist  philosophers  and  men  of  letters. 

In  these  various  ways,  then,  Carlyle's 
essay  is  an  expression  of  the  current  feeling ; 
in  its  sense  that  the  time  was  a  critical  and 
dangerous  one,  in  its  anxious  desire  to  diag- 
nose its  diseases  and  to  suggest  remedies,  in 
its  emphasis  upon  the  industrial  nature  of 
the  age  and  the  importance  of  machinery, 
and  in  its  feeling  that  the  spiritual  life  of 
the  people  was  being  crushed  by  the  mate- 
rial, the  scientific,  and  the  mechanical.  The 
essay,  however,  differs  widely  in  spirit  from 


THE  TIMES  95 

all  other  contemporary  discussions  of  the 
subject.  It  differs  in  its  greater  breadth  of 
treatment  and  in  its  emphasis  upon  the 
moral  rather  than  the  economic  aspect  of 
the  subject. 

After  indicating  in  general  the  spirit  of 
the  age  Carlyle  proceeds  to  point  out  its 
various  manifestations.  The  prevalence  of 
educational  machinery  is  one;  the  religious 
machines,  such  as  the  Bible  Society,  sup- 
ported by  "puffing,  intrigue  and  chicane,"* 
are  another;  the  rapid  formation  of  scien- 
tific institutions1*  is  another.  The  science  of 
Mind  has  yielded  in  interest  to  physical 
science.  It  is  supported  weakly  by  the 
Scottish  School,  but  has  become  for  the  most 
part  materialistic  in  character.  Cabanis  in 
France  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that  "as 
the  liver  secretes  bile,  so  does  the  brain 
secrete  thought,"  and  that  Poetry  and  Reli- 
gion are  "a  product  of  the  smaller  intes- 
tines." In  politics  the  trust  in  the  efficiency 
of  parliamentary  reforms  and  other  political 

a  The  Quarterly  for  June,  1827,  in  an  attack  on  the  trans- 
lations of  the  Bible  Society  refers  to  the  "glowing  terms"  of 
praise  of  its  panegyrists. 

b  For  evidence  as  to  the  "growing  taste  for  the  cultivation 
of  Physical  Science"  in  England  as  attested  by  the  formation 
of  scientific  institutions  see  the  Quarterly  for  June,  1826. 


96  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

contrivances  is  evidence  of  a  mechanical 
turn  of  thought.  Even  poetry  has  gone 
over  to  an  idol-worship  of  some  "brute- 
image  of  Strength." 

Such  are  the  manifestations  of  the 
mechanical  spirit  of  the  age.  More  impor- 
tant still  is  an  explanation  of  its  origin. 
Carlyle  finds  this  a  moral  one.  For  him  the 
ultimate  causes  of  all  phenomena  are  spirit- 
ual, mysterious,  profound.  Circumstances 
are  the  product  of  man  and  not  man  of  cir- 
cumstances. The  prevalence  of  machinery 
therefore  is  not  the  cause  of  the  current 
conditions,  but  a  symptom  of  that  cause. 
The  cause  itself  is  the  placing  of  men's 
faith  in  the  outward  and  mechanical,  and 
the  devotion  of  men's  best  powers  to  the 
development  of  this  province,  instead  of 
"applying  themselves  chiefly  to  regulate, 
increase  and  purify  the  inward  primary 
powers  of  man,"  an  enterprise  of  vastly 
greater  importance.  If  this  is  so,  then  man 
needs  only  to  be  rightly  directed  to  acquire 
true  spiritual  freedom;  "we  are  but  fettered 
by  chains  of  our  own  forging."  In  the  mean- 
while we  may  begin  the  needed  reform,  not 
by  attempting  to  mend  a  world  or  a  nation, 


THE  TIMES  97 

but  by  setting  diligently  about  the  perfection 
of  our  individual  selves. 

One  of  the  ways  in  which  Carlyle  and  his 
great  contemporaries,  Ruskin,  Arnold  and 
Emerson,  differ  from  any  other  group  of 
English-writing  essayists  before  or  since,  is 
their  intense  concern  in  national  movements 
and  social  conditions,  coupled  with  a  scorn 
of  mere  expediency  and  a  strong  desire  to 
see  and  interpret  the  broad  moral  issues. 
An  excellent  illustration  of  this  general  ten- 
dency together  with  certain  differences  in 
their  methods  of  attack  and  points  of  view 
is  furnished  by  their  various  handling  of  this 
question  of  mechanism  and  the  use  of 
machinery.  Each  of  these  men  in  his  own 
way  recognizes  the  danger  of  the  one-sided 
development  of  a  mechanical  age,  and  each 
characteristically  protests  against  it,  Ruskin 
because  of  his  interest  in  the  lower  classes 
and  in  art  and  the  artistic  ordering  of  life; 
Arnold  because  of  his  faith  in  the  efficacy  of 
a  wide  culture,  an  internal  perfection  to 
which  the  externality  of  machinery  is 
opposed;  Emerson  because  of  his  absorbing 
interest  in  individual  development  and  his 
fear  that  machinery  will  reduce  men  to 


98  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

machines  ;a  Carlyle  because  of  his  conviction 
of  the  paramount  importance  of  the  moral 
and  religious  life  and  his  fear  that  machinery 
will  turn  men  from  trust  in  inner  inspiration 
to  trust  in  the  external  and  mechanical. 
Arnold  and  Carlyle  especially  have  essen- 
tially the  same  thought,  and  the  famous 
passage  in  Culture  and  Anarchy  (1867)  is 
little  more  than  a  restatement  of  Carlyle's 
essay  of  1829.  When  Arnold  tells  us  that 
"faith  in  machinery  is  our  besetting  danger," 
that  "our  whole  civilization  is  mechanical 
and  external,"  and  that  "human  perfection 
is  in  an  internal  condition,"  we  have  Carlyle 
reechoed.  The  possibility  of  widening  the 
definition  of  machinery  by  applying  the 
term  to  such  things  as  the  national  wealth, 
the  railways  and  the  coal  industries,  and  to 
religious  and  social  organizations,  was  also 
first  indicated  in  the  earlier  essay.  How 
clearly  is  Arnold's  very  phraseology  antici- 
pated in  such  a  sentence  as  this  from  Signs 
of  the  Times:  "Not  for  internal  perfection, 
but  for  external  combinations  and  arrange- 
ments, for  institutions,  constitutions, — for 

a  See  Emerson's   Works,  Centenary  Ed.,  vol.  5,  pages  103 
and  163,  and  vol.  6,  page  164. 


THE  TIMES  99 

Mechanism  of  one  sort  or  other,  do  they 
hope  and  struggle." 

The  essay  called  Characteristics  hardly 
falls  within  the  period  which  we  have  called 
that  of  Carlyle's  apprenticeship,  but  it  must 
be  included  for  the  sake  of  completeness  in 
our  discussion.  Carlyle  spoke  of  it  in  a 
letter  of  December  4,  1831,  as  "a  sort  of 
second  Signs  of  the  Times,"  and  this  is  an 
apt  enough  description  of  it.  Like  the 
earlier  essay  it  is  a  searching  investigation 
of  contemporary  conditions ;  like  that  it  dis- 
covers a  single  principle,  that  of  Self- 
Consciousness,  corresponding  to  the  Mechan- 
ism of  Signs  of  the  Times,  which  it  applies 
to  every  walk  of  life ;  in  a  similar  way  it  finds 
this  principle  a  symptom  rather  than  a  cause 
of  existing  spiritual  conditions,  and  it  joins 
a  pessimism  concerning  the  present  with 
hope  and  confidence  concerning  the  future 
and  the  spiritual  capabilities  of  man. 

Carlyle's  much  disputed  principle  of 
unconsciousness  is  an  important  one  and 
will  be  seen  to  lie  at  the  root  of  his  whole 
philosophy.  Stated  briefly  it  is  this,  that 
"always  the  characteristic  of  right  perform- 
ance is  a  certain  spontaneity,  an  uncon- 


100  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

sciousness,  'the  healthy  know  not  of  their 
health,  but  only  the  sick.'"  Thus,  "the 
Orator  persuades  and  carries  all  with  him, 
he  knows  not  how,"  while  the  Rhetorician  is 
intensely  conscious  of  every  trick  by  means 
of  which  he  should  have  done  so ;  true  virtue 
is  a  "spontaneous,  habitual,  all-pervading 
spirit  of  Chivalrous  Valour,"  when  it  becomes 
conscious  of  itself  it  dwindles  into  a  "punc- 
tilious Politeness,  'avoiding  meats';  'paying 
tithes  of  mint  and  anise,  neglecting  the 
weightier  matters  of  the  law.' '  Similarly 
the  true  Poet  differs  from  the  little  one  in 
his  greater  spontaneity  of  performance. 

Applying  this  principle  to  contemporary 
conditions  we  discover  the  age  to  be  an 
intensely  self-conscious  one.  Instead  of 
poetic  creation  we  find  men  occupied  with 
Theories  of  Poetry;  instead  of  heroic  con- 
duct with  Discourses  on  the  Evidences; 
instead  of  loyalty  and  patriotism  with 
Reform  Bills  and  Codifications.  The  same 
tendency  is  to  be  observed  in  the  character 
of  our  speculative  thinking.  The  very 
existence  of  Metaphysics  is  itself  a  symp- 
tom of  disease.  "In  the  perfect  state,  all 
Thought  were  but  the  picture  and  inspiring 


THE  TIMES  101 

symbol  of  Action;  Philosophy,  except  as 
Poetry  and  Religion,  would  have  no  being." 
Metaphysics  is,  in  essence,  a  skeptical 
inquiry.  The  present  is  in  this  sense  a 
highly  metaphysical  age.  It  probes  into  and 
casts  doubt  upon  all  things ;  "Faith  has  well 
nigh  vanished  from  the  world."a 

The  criticisms  that  have  been  made  on 
this  theory  as  here  enunciated  have  failed, 
I  think,  to  probe  to  the  bottom  of  Carlyle's 
thought.  It  has  been  objected,  for  instance, 
that  men  like  Dante,  Shakespeare  and  Cer- 
vantes were  well  aware  of  the  greatness  of 
what  they  had  produced.  It  is  true  that 
Carlyle  makes  something  of  this  point,  but 
it  does  not  constitute  the  center  of  his  doc- 
trine. We  must  remember  once  more  that 
Carlyle  is  a  transcendentalist  and  that 
Transcendentalism  lays  most  stress  upon  the 
value  of  inspiration,  intuition  and  the  mys- 
terious and  primary  energies  as  contrasted 
with  logic,  argument  and  ratiocination. 

a  Carlyle's  theory  of  the  unconsciousness  or  spontaneity  of 
the  production  of  any  great  creative  work  is  reinforced  by 
that  of  Emerson.  Their  comments  on  Hamlet,  for  instance, 
are  very  similar.  Carlyle  says:  "The  Shakespeare  takes  no 
airs  for  writing  Hamlet  and  The  Tempest,  understands  not 
that  it  is  anything  surprising."  Emerson  says:  "Shakes- 
peare made  his  Hamlet  as  a  bird  weaves  its  nest." 


102  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

What  Carlyle  is  trying  to  impress  upon  us 
is,  not  that  Shakespeare  and  Dante  were 
totally  unconscious  of  their  genius,  but  that 
they  were  unconscious  of  its  processes  as 
explicable,  namable  or  describable.  The 
processes  which  produce  a  great  poem  or 
a  great  heroism  are  unconscious  simply 
because  they  are  profound,  mysterious, 
spiritual,  not  technical,  logical  or  mechan- 
ical. 

Consciousness  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  only 
another  name  for  Mechanism.  Men  become 
intensely  self-conscious  when  they  are  think- 
ing exclusively  of  the  outward  and  mechani- 
cal; for  it  is  only  the  mechanical  processes 
which  we  can  explain  or  talk  about  with 
much  profit.  That  this  identification  is  clear 
in  Carlyle's  own  mind  appears  in  various 
passages.  "Boundless  as  is  the  domain  of 
man,"  he  says  in  the  fourth  paragraph  of 
the  essay,  "it  is  but  a  small  fractional  pro- 
portion of  it  that  he  rules  with  Conscious- 
ness and  by  Forethought:  what  he  can  con- 
trive, nay  what  he  can  altogether  know  and 
comprehend,  is  essentially  the  mechanical, 
small;  the  great  is  ever,  in  one  sense  or 
other,  the  vital;  it  is  essentially  the  myste- 


THE  TIMES  103 

rious,  and  only  the  surface  of  it  can  be 
understood."  Again:  "In  our  inward,  as 
in  our  outward  world,  what  is  mechanical  lies 
open  to  us:  not  what  is  dynamical  and  has 
vitality.  Of  our  Thinking,  we  might  say, 
it  is  but  the  mere  surface  that  we  shape 
into  articulate  Thoughts ; — underneath  the 
region  of  argument  and  conscious  discourse 
lies  the  region  of  meditation ;  here,  in  its 
quiet  mysterious  depths,  dwells  what  vital 
force  is  in  us ;  here,  if  aught  is  to  be  created, 
and  not  merely  manufactured  and  communi- 
cated, must  the  work  go  on.  Manufacture 
is  intelligible  and  trivial;  Creation  is  great, 
and  cannot  be  understood." 

Carlyle's  criticism  must  not,  therefore,  be 
understood  as  meaning  that  we  are  thinking 
too  much,  but  that  we  are  thinking  too 
superficially;  not  that  we  should  substitute 
blind  instinct  for  reason,  but  that  we  should 
recognize  and  cultivate  the  vital  depths  of 
our  nature  out  of  which  poetry  and  religion 
and  all  that  is  deepest  and  highest  in  us 
unconsciously  spring.  To  those  who  have 
followed  the  present  discussion  this  doctrine 
will  occasion  no  surprise.  It  is  in  perfect 
accord  with  all  that  he  has  hitherto  spoken. 


4 


104  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

It  is  another  form  of  his  theory  of  poetry. 
It  rests  upon  that  transcendental  belief  in 
the  supremacy  of  the  Reason  over  the  Under- 
standing which,  he  had  stated  two  years 
before,  constituted,  in  his  belief,  the  most 
important  feature  of  the  Kantian  'meta- 
physics. "The  healthy  Understanding,"  he 
says  in  the  present  essay,  "we  should  say,  is 
not  the  logical,  argumentative,  but  the 
Intuitive."  It  is  connected  also  with  the 
constant  insistence  which  we  find  in  Sartor 
and  have  already  noticed,  upon  the  recog- 
nition of  mystery,  as  well  as  with  that  well- 
known  doctrine  of  Silence  which  Carlyle  has 
been  ridiculed  for  vociferating  "in  thirty 
volumes."  Whoever,  therefore,  rejects  Car- 
lyle's  theory  of  Consciousness  must  be  ready 
to  quarrel  with  the  whole  body  of  thought 
into  the  tissue  of  which  this  theory  is  woven. 
We  have  said  that  the  essay  on  Character- 
istics ends  with  the  strong  optimism  which  in 
the  end  prevails  in  all  the  early  essays.  It 
is  evident  that  man's  spiritual  progress  is  a 
matter  not  only  of  faith  but  of  observation. 
No  truth  or  goodness  can  ever  die;  though 
the  forms  perish  the  immortal  soul  survives. 
Present  conditions  need  not  therefore  alarm 


THE  TIMES  105 

us.  The  principle  of  life  now  confined  to 
the  conscious  and  mechanical  will  once  more 
find  its  true  domain  to  be  the  unconscious 
and  dynamical.  Evidence  is  not  wanting  to 
indicate  that  this  change  is  even  now  taking 
place.  Men  are  beginning  to  recognize 
again  that  God  is  present  in  human  affairs 
and  that  the  age  of  miracles  is  not  a  thing 
of  the  past.  The  mystery  of  the  Infinite  is 
still  a  mystery.  The  battle  of  life  may  still 
be  fought  with  submission,  courage,  and 
heroic  joy.  "Behind  us,  behind  each  one  of 
us,  lie  Six  Thousand  Years  of  human  effort, 
human  conquest:  before  us  is  the  boundless 
Time,  with  its  yet  uncreated  and  uncon- 
quered  Continents  and  Eldorados,  which  we, 
even  we,  have  to  conquer,  to  create;  and 
from  the  bosom  of  Eternity  there  shine  for 
us  celestial  guiding  stars. 

'  My  inheritance  how  wide  and  fair ! 
Time  is  my  fair  seed-field,  of  Time  I'm  heir.' " 

From  the  above  discussion  it  will  be  clear 
that  the  character  of  Carlyle's  criticism  of 
his  times,  like  his  theory  of  poetry  and  his 
practice  in  history  and  biography,  was 
determined  by  that  spiritual  philosophy 
which  enters  into  or  dominates  every  one  of 


• 


106  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

his  important  utterances  from  the  Life  of 
Schiller  to  the  History  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  It  was  essentially  a  moral  incitement 
and  to  a  large  extent  individualistic.  Men 
are  to  begin  by  reforming  themselves,  not  by 
entering  into  any  large  schemes  of  social 
reconstruction.  This  continued  to  be  his 
position  to  the  end  of  his  life.  His  skep- 
ticism as  to  the  value  of  any  schemes  of 
reform,  which  later  expressed  itself  in  the 
reactionary  sentiments  of  Model  Prisons  and 
the  frequent  contemptuous  allusions  to  the 
"dismal  science"  of  economics,  already 
appears  in  the  private  jottings  of  his  jour- 
nal and  with  less  personal  feeling  in  his  pub- 
lished essays. 

Carlyle  believed  in  probing  deeply,  in 
striking  at  the  roots  of  evil  and  in  strength- 
ening the  sources  of  good.  These  sources  he 
believed  to  be  human  and  spiritual.  The  so- 
called  economic  theory  of  history  had  not 
been  clearly  set  forth  in  his  day.  But  Signs 
of  the  Times  and  Characteristics  are  in  a 
sense  a  partial  refutation  of  this  theory.  In 
these  essays  institutions  of  whatever  sort  are 
looked  upon  as  mechanical,  accordingly  as 
external,  and  in  comparison  with  internal 


THE  TIMES  107 

and  dynamic  forces  as  of  inferior  impor- 
tance. Both  in  this  individualism  and  in  his 
moral  emphasis,  Carlyle,  though  differing  in 
detail,  agrees  in  essentials  with  the  other 
great  didactic  essayists  whom  we  have 
already  mentioned  in  connection  with  the 
Signs  of  the  Times.  Emerson  carries  individ- 
ualism to  the  extent  of  a  sort  of  philosophi- 
cal anarchism.  Arnold,  though  he  strongly 
believed  in  the  importance  of  the  principle  of 
equality,  devoted  himself  to  the  encourage- 
ment of  the  harmonious  expansion  of  the 
inward  powers  of  the  individual  man.  Rus- 
kin  saw  the  value  of  cooperation  and  con- 
cerned himself  to  a  considerable  extent  with 
economic  questions,  but  he,  too,  interpreted 
life  from  the  moral,  rather  than  from  the 
economic  standpoint. 

Carlyle's  attitude  toward  social  problems, 
though  in  large  measure  still  valid,  seems 
incomplete  to  serious  students  of  the  pre- 
sent day.  Perhaps  it  is  an  indication  of  the 
partial  triumph  of  the  materialistic  con- 
ception of  life  which  he  deprecated  that  we 
look  upon  the  adjustment  of  institutions  as 
of  as  much  importance  to  the  soul  of  the 
state  as  care  of  the  body  is  necessary  to  spir- 


108  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

itual  health.  "Mending  a  world"  may  be  a 
task  beyond  our  powers,  but  social  reorgan- 
ization on  a  large  scale  is  no  longer  believed 
to  be  impossible.  The  clamor  of  socialism 
is  becoming  more  and  more  insistent,  and  is 
more  and  more  enlisting  the  sympathetic 
attention  of  thoughtful  men.  At  least  we 
have  become  convinced  that  some  mechanism 
must  be  provided  for  making  moral  impetus 
effective.  We  must  look  to  men  of  science 
and  of  practical  knowledge  and  training, 
men  willing  to  deal  in  patient  and  painstak- 
ing fashion  with  matters  of  mechanical  detail, 
to  carry  out  the  reform  made  apparent  to 
us  through  the  awakening  of  the  individual 
and  the  social  conscience  by  our  Tolstois  and 
our  Carlyles.  So  far  as  permanent  literary 
value  is  concerned,  however,  Carlyle  showed 
in  these  essays  an  unerring  instinct  in  deal- 
ing powerfully  with  fundamental  moral 
issues,  rather  than  with  mechanical  details 
of  ephemeral  interest. 


V 
SARTOR  RESARTUS 

Anything  like  a  systematic  discussion  of 
Sartor  Resartus  does  not  form  a  part  of  the 
present  plan.  It  would  be  at  best  a  gratui- 
tous performance,  since  the  book  has  been 
analyzed  already  many  times,  and  is  thor- 
oughly familiar  to  all  students  and  lovers  of 
Carlyle.  It  will  be  evident  to  such  a  one 
that  Sartor  has  gathered  up  the  reflections 
and  convictions  presented  in  a  fragmentary 
way  in  the  earlier  works  and  repeated  them 
in  more  compact  and  striking  form.  There 
is  little  that  is  new,  and  sometimes  the  new 
statement  of  truth  is  less  clear  or  effective 
than  the  original.  The  total  impression, 
however,  is  far  more  powerful  than  that  of 
any  earlier  writing.  There  is  still  no  fully 
rounded  or  systematized  philosophy.  But 
the  author,  by  freeing  himself  from  the 
tyranny  of  facts,  with  which  he  felt  himself 
obliged  largely  to  deal  in  the  critical  essays, 
has  been  enabled  to  give  greater  space  to 
the  enunciation  of  truth.  The  comments 


110  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

on  poetry,  philosophy  and  religion  and  the 
criticisms  of  society  and  the  age  appear 
again,  not  as  incidental  reflections,  but  as 
part  of  the  central  theme.  These  comments 
are  for  the  most  part  confined  to  the  first 
and  third  books.  The  first  book  moves  on 
a  distinctly  lower  plane  than  the  other  two; 
in  the  third  the  author  rises  to  his  greatest 
height  of  poetic  power,  a  height  not  far 
below  the  supremely  great.  All  this  is 
rendered  vital  and  bound  together  by  the 

/spiritual  autobiography  which  forms  book 
two,  in  which  the  passage  through  doubt 
and  unbelief  to  the  attainment  of  a  tran- 
scendental philosophy  is  portrayed.  Any 
adequate  discussion  of  the  ethics  and  meta- 
physics of  Sartor  would  take  us  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  a  short  essay.  We  propose, 
therefore,  to  point  out  only  a  single  charac- 
teristic of  Carlyle's  thought  common  to  both 
Sartor  and  the  earlier  essays,  and  to  discuss 
in  some  detail  the  mode  of  its  manifestation 
in  the  former. 

/      We    have    seen    everywhere    in    Carlyle's 

/   work  that  his  thought  naturally  falls  into 

some  sort  of  opposition.     Thus  he  is  fond  of 

opposing  matter  and  spirit,  appearance  and 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  111 

reality,  the  Understanding  and  the  Reason, 
Time  and  Eternity,  doubt  and  faith,  logic 
and  intuition,  Mechanics  and  Dynamics,  the 
conscious  and  the  unconscious,  knowledge 
and  mystery.  In  each  of  these  cases,  while 
allowing  a  certain  inferior  value  to  the 
former,  his  chief  purpose  is  to  convince  with 
all  the  power  of  his  eloquence  that  by  far 
the  superior  worth  belongs  to  the  latter. 
In  Sartor  this  opposition  occurs  again  in  all 
its  forms,  but  it  becomes  most  clearly  mani- 
fest and  most  inclusive  in  the  antithesis  of 
two  modes  of  thought"  characteristic  of 
Teufelsdrockh's  mind  under  different  condi- 
tions, designated  as  Tra^sjc^G^nialism  and  | 
Descendentalism,  or  as  it  is  more  frequently 
called,  Sansculottism. 

To  make  this  distinction  clear  we  must 
say  a  word  about  the  sources  of  Sartor. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  Carlyle  derived 
his  notion  of  a  clothes-philosophy  from  a 
pstssage  in  Swift's  Tale  of  a  Tub.  In  section 
two  of  that  work  Swift  tells  us  of  a  certain 
sect  of  philosophers  who  "held  the  universe 
to  be  a  large  suit  of  clothes,  which  invests 
everything ;  that  the  earth  is  invested  by  the 
air,  the  air  is  invested  by  the  stars,  and  the 


112  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

stars  are  invested  by  the  primum  mobile." 
This  is  generally  conceded  as  having  fur- 
nished Carlyle  with  the  starting-point  of 
Sartor.  But  Carlyle  had  in  common  with 
Swift  something  more  than  a  clever  idea  that 
the  world  might  be  looked  upon  as  a  huge 
suit  of  clothes.  While  at  college  his  fond- 
ness for  Swift's  writings  and  his  possession 
of  a  certain  Swiftian  power  of  satire  were 
noticed  by  his  friends  and  he  was  nicknamed 
"Jonathan"  and  "The  Dean."  This  satirical 
power  which  ruthlessly  tears  away  obscuring 
veils,  exposes  shams,  and  brings  to  light  the 
practical  and  material  actualities  of  things, 
may  be  looked  upon  as  the  Swiftian  side  of 
Sartor.  It  is  called  Descendentalism  or 
Sansculottism.  / 

On  the  other  hand  Carlyle's  thought 
derives  from  the  German  transcendental 
philosophy  and  Goethe.  Professor  Adamson 
says  that  "the  guiding  principle  of  all  Car- 
lyle's ethical  work  is  the  principle  of  Fichte's 
speculation  that  the  world  of  experience  is 
but  the  appearance  or  vesture  of  the  divine 
idea  of  life;  and  that  he  alone  has  true  life 
who  is  willing  to  resign  his  own  personality 
in  the  service  of  humanity."  Of  his  enor- 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  113 

mous  indebtedness  to  Goethe  we  have  already 
had  sufficient  evidence.  Novalis  and  Richter 
contributed  detached  ideas  and  furnished 
further  illustration  of  the  German  philos- 
ophy appearing  in  literary  form.  All  these 
Germans  strengthened  in  Carlyle  the  mode 
of  thought  which  we  have  called  transcen- 
dental. 

The  clear  indication  of  opposition  in  the 
words  Transcendentalism  and  Descendental- 
ism  is  further  strengthened  by  the  name  and 
description  of  the  hero.  The  full  name, 
Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,*  God-born  Devil's 
Dung,  indicates  the  combination  in  one  per- 
son of  the  half  malicious  Swiftian  satire  with 
the  ethereal  idealism  of  a  Fichte  or  a  Goethe. 
Carlyle  calls  attention  to  this  twofold  nature 
of  his  hero  in  numerous  places.  In  the  chap- 
ter on  Reminiscences  the  editor  remembers 
seeing  in  his  eyes  "gleams  of  an  ethereal  or 
else  a  diabolic  fire";  in  the  chapter  on  Char- 

a  The  "secret  design  in  the  composition  of  this  most 
uneuphonious  proper  name"  is  first  noticed  in  a  note  to  an 
excellent  review  of  Sartor  by  N.  L.  Frothingham  in  the 
Christian  Examiner  for  September,  1836,  shortly  after  the 
publication  of  the  book  in  America.  The  writer  finds  his 
conjecture  confirmed  by  the  character  of  the  professor,  "who 
is  a  great  radical  and  seems  to  be  made  up  of  violently 
opposite  elements." 


114  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

acteristics  we  are  told  that  his  voice  screws 
itself  aloft  "as  into  the  song  of  spirits,  or 
else  the  shrill  mockery  of  fiends,"  that  at 
times  we  distinguish  "gleams  of  an  ethereal 
love,"  "soft  wailings  of  infinite  pity,"  and  at 
others  "some  half  invisible  wrinkle  of  a  bitter 
sardonic  humor"  so  that  "you  look  on  him 
almost  with  a  shudder,  as  on  some  incarnate 
Mephistopheles."  His  eyes  again  are  de- 
scribed as  sparkling  with  lights,  which  "may 
indeed  be  reflexes  of  the  heavenly  stars,  but 
perhaps  also  gleams  from  the  region  of 
Nether  Fire." 

The  nature  of  the  opposing  elements  in 
Sartor  now  becomes  clear.  The  one  is  to  be 
expressed  through  the  half  diabolic  medium 
of  satire,  the  other  through  seraphic  ecstasy 
or  rapt  contemplation.  The  one  employs 
the  faculty  of  the  Understanding,  the  acute 
understanding  and  penetrating  common 
sense  of  a  Swift,  the  other  that  of  the 
Reason,  the  divine  vision  of  a  Fichte.  The 
one  deals  with  the  actual  world  about  us, 
and  beholds  man  in  his  social  relations,  a 
man  among  men,  but  stripped  of  all  such 
"adventitious  wrappages"  as  disguise  his 
actual  manhood;  the  other  deals  with  the 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  115 

world  of  spiritual  reality,  with  the  isolated 
soul  brought  face  to  face  with  the  divine 
universe,  spirit  meeting  with  spirit.  The 
one  is  largely  destructive,  negative,  an 
exposure  of  the  false,  the  other  is  wholly 
constructive,  affirmative,  a  revelation  of  the 
true.  The  one  is  partial  and  needs  some 
higher  vision  to  complete  it,  the  other  sup- 
plies that  deficiency  and  gives  it  worth. 
Both  are  methods  of  seeing  the  truth,  and 
both  are  necessary  to  complete  and  perfect 
vision.  £Descendentalism,  as  we  have  said,  is 
the  faculty  which  enables  us  to  see  beneath 
outward  wrappings  of  clothing  or  the  like 
the  common  human  animal,  to  discern  that 
"within  the  most  starched  cravat  there  passes 
a  windpipe  and  a  weasand,"  that  underneath 
the  choicest  cloak  there  is  only  "a  forked 
straddling  animal  with  bandy  legs"  or  "a 
forked  radish  with  a  head  fantastically 
carved,"  and  which  finds  no  great  difference 
between  the  star  of  a  lord  and  the  clown's 
broad  button  of  Birmingham  spelter.  Dwell- 
ing much  upon  man's  common  humanity  and 
helplessness  it  leads  to  a  sort  of  radicalism 
in  which  the  brotherhood  of  man  is  recog- 
nized, though  approached  through  the 


116  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

medium  of  satire.  The  term  "Sansculot- 
tism,"  that  is,  the  condition  of  being  without 
breeches,  a  term  used  to  designate  the  radical 
republican  party  during  the  period  of  the 
French  Revolution,  is  an  implication  of  this. 
The  idea  had  been  expressed  long  before 
Swift's  time  and  in  a  more  wonderful  way 
than  he  expressed  it.  Lear,  stripped  of  his 
power,  finds  his  royal  robes  a  mockery,  and 
as  he  enters  the  hut  and  finds  the  naked 
Edgar,  the  truth  of  man's  common  humanity 
and  helplessness  overpowers  him.  He  pro- 
ceeds to  strip  off  his  lendings,  his  borrowing 
from  the  sheep  and  the  silkworm,  and  to 
become  in  appearance  what  he  is  in  fact,  a 
poor,  bare,  forked  animal.  With  this  idea, 
then,  are  naturally  connected  the  social  rela- 
tions of  man.  Lear  thinks  of  the  "poor, 
naked  wretches"  exposed  to  the  "pelting  of 
the  pitiless  storm,"  and  his  act  is  symbolic 
of  his  sympathy  and  feeling  of  brotherhood 
with  them.  All  this  Carlyle  has  in  mind  in 
his  development  of  the  idea  of  Sansculottism. 
Further  illustration  of  the  duality  of 
Sartor  need  be  only  briefly  indicated.  It  is 
Teufelsdrockh,  the  Sansculottist,  who  rises 
in  the  tavern  with  his  tumbler  of  gukguk  to 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  117 

propose  a  toast  to  the  poor  "in  Gottes  and 
Teufels  Namen";  it  is  he  whose  sharp  sar- 
casm suggests  that  the  scarecrow,  as  clothed 
person  par  excellence,  should  be  allowed 
special  privilege,  such  as  trial  by  jury;  and 
whose  whimsical  imagination  has  the  strange 
habit  of  suddenly  divesting  the  occupants  of 
a  drawing-room  of  their  clothing  and  behold- 
ing them  straddling  there  in  nakedness. 

It  is  Diogenes,  the  Transcendentalist,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  alone  with  the  stars  sits 
in  the  watch  tower  of  the  Wahngasse,  -look- 
ing down  upon  the  living  flood,  hurrying 
from  Eternity  onward  to  Eternity.  "The 
world  with  its  loud  traffickings  retires,"  and 
he  is  alone  with  the  universe,  one  mysterious 
presence  communing  with  another.  Pin  the 
deeper  speculations  of  this  mood  man  is  seen 
to  be  a  spirit,  and  the  universe  to  be  but  the 
Phantasy  of  his  dream.  ';  We  are  surrounded 
by  Phantasmagoria ;  we  live  as  in  a  dream 

grotto  and  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  the 
canvas  whereon  our  dreams  are  painted, 
namely,  space  and  time,  are  themselves  only 
modes  of  thought  and  vanish  when  we  try 

*  to  grasp  them.  To  the  eye  of  vulgar  logic, 
indeed,  man  is  but  "an  omniverous  Biped 


118  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

that  wears  Breeches,"  but  to  the  eye  of  Pure 
Reason  he  is  a  spirit,  a  divine  Apparition,  a 
revelation  of  the  spirit  in  the  form  of  flesh, 
dwelling  in  a  sky-woven  universe. 

Thus  the  author  arrives  again  at  the 
recurring  thought.  Everything  yields  to 
him  a  double  meaning.  In  the  Imperial 
Sceptre  and  the  ox-goad  alike  he  sees  decay, 
contemptibility  (this  is  Descendentalism) ; 
yet  as  the  revelation  of  spirit  he  finds  in  both 
Poetry  and  reverend  worth.  "For  matter, 
were  it  never  so  despicable,  is  spirit,  the 
manifestation  of  spirit ;  were  it  never  so 
honorable,  can  it  be  more?" 

In  this  way  the  two  ideas  draw  together 
for  final  treatment  in  the  last  chapter  of  the 
first  book,  in  which  the  unity  of  all  nature 
is  emphasized.  Not  only  is  all  physical 
nature  correlated,  "the  smithy-fire  kindled 
at  the  sun,"  but  physical  and  spiritual  are 
shown  also  to  be  one,  that  is,  philosophical 
monism  is  taught.  All  objects  are  window* 
looking  into  infinitude.  [  "Matter  exists  only 
spiritually,  and  to  represent  some  idea  and 
body  it  forth."  "What  thou  seest  is  not 
there  on  its  own  account;  strictly  taken  is 
not  there  at  all."  Finally,  at  the  close  of 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  119 

the  chapter  we  are  prepared  for  the  new 
way  of  taking  up  the  whole  matter  again  in 
the  form  of  human  experience  by  the  news 
of  the  arrival  of  Heuschrecke's  "six  consid- 
erable paper-bags"  and  an  anticipation  of 
the  editor's  task  in  straightening  out  the 
material. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  trace  in  detail  the 
progress  of  the  spiritual  warfare  described 
in  book  two,  but  it  is  important  to  point 
out  that  the  opposing  elements  are  precisely 
the  same  as  those  of  book  one.  The  Ever- 
lasting No  is  not,  I  believe,  to  be  understood, 
as  one  critic  has  defined  it,  as  the  "sum 
of  facts  adverse  to  the  moral  order  of 
the  universe,"  but  rather  as  the  spirit  of 
Denial,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  represents 
for  the  modern  man  a  necessary  stage  in 
the  soul's  progress  towards  spiritual  free- 
dom. Divorced,  indeed,  from  any  capacity 
for  the  higher  vision,  it  does  represent  the 
spirit  of  Time  or  the  devil.  In  the  essay  on 
Goethe  s  Helena,  Carlyle  had  thus  described 
the  character  of  Mephistopheles :  "Such  a 
combination  of  perfect  Understanding  with 
perfect  Selfishness,  of  logical  Life  with 
moral  Death;  so  universal  a  denier,  both  in 


120  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

heart  and  head, — is  undoubtedly  a  child  of 
Darkness,  an  emissary  of  primeval  Nothing; 
and  coming  forward,  as  he  does,  like  a  person 
of  breeding,  and  without  any  flavor  of  brim- 
stone, may  stand  here,  in  his  merely  spiritual 
deformity,  at  once  potent,  dangerous  and 
contemptible,  as  the  best  and  only  genuine 
Devil  of  these  latter  times."  Doubt  and 
denial,  however,  cannot  be  conceived  of  as 
evil  except  when  they  are  final  processes. 
When  preliminary  steps  toward  affirmation 
and  reconstruction  they  are  means  of  good. 
It  is  because  the  hero  of  Sartor  joins  to  the 
spirit  of  denial  the  will  to  believe,  because 
he  is  capable  of  both  Descendentalism  and 
Transcendentalism,  that  the  ultimate  out- 
come of  his  struggle  is  victory.  _ 

It  is  often  complained  thatiCarlyle's  doc- 
trine of  renunciation  and  duty,  which  is  the 
final  message  of  Sartor,  and  his  ideal  of  a 
Blessedness  which  agrees  to  renounce  all 
claim  upon  the  world's  gifts  of  happiness, 
fame  or  what  not,  while  consecrating  life  and 
labor  to  the  world's  betterment,  is  narrow 
and  incomplete.  Doubtless  it  is  so.  To  no 
man  is  it  given  to  see  and  to  appropriate  in 
the  form  of  experience  the  whole  truth. 


^Riv 


SARTOR  RESARTUS  121 


ly  it  is  enough  for  one  book  that  for 
thousands  of  readers  it  has  helped  to  sharpen 
insight,  strengthen  veracity  and  encourage 
devotion  of  purpose  to  noble  ends. 


CONCLUSION 

The  years  between  1814  and  1831  have 
been  designated  as  those  of  Carlyle's  appren- 
ticeship, because  during  this  period  he  was 
consciously  dependent  upon  the  thought  and 
learning  of  other  men  and  had  not  yet  given 
his  ideas  a  distinctly  coherent  and  individual 
form.  The  foregoing  discussion,  however, 
will  make  it  plain  that  his  later  work  was 
simply  a  clearer  enunciation  and  wider 
application  of  ideas  already  gathered  and 
reflected  upon  in  the  early  years.  There  is, 
for  instance,  not  one  of  his  philosophical  and 
religious  teachings  which  does  not  find  place 

here.      The   transcendental   doctrine   of   the 

^ 

reality  of  spirit  and  the  phenomenal  char- 
acter of  matter,  which  dominates  all  his 
thought  and  is 'no  less  important  to  the 
appreciation  of  The  French  Revolution  than 
to  the  understanding  of  Sartor,  is  more 
clearly  stated  in  the  Critical  Essays  than 
anywhere  in  his  later  work.  The  ethical 
ideas  of  renunciation,  of  reverence  and  hero- 
worship,  of  sincerity  and  hatred  of  cant,  as 
well  as  the  gospel  of  work,  are  all  touched 


CONCLUSION  123 

upon  or  fully  expounded.  Carlyle's  central 
religious  idea,  the  belief  in  an  immanent 
divine  presence  rendering  all  phenomena 
miraculous  and  worthy  of  reverence,  is  also 
fully  set  forth.  His  attitude  toward  the 
Christian  religion  as  one  among  many  forms, 
though  incomparably  the  highest,  constitut- 
ing a  continuous  revelation  of  God  through 
all  ages  and  to  all  men,  remains  through  life 
practically  unchanged. 

Carlyle  dealt  with  the  theory  of  poetry  to 
a  far  greater  proportionate  extent  in  his 
early  essays  than  at  any  later  time.  His 
emphasis  upon  the  instructional  value  of 
poetry,  his  identification  of  its  ultimate  pur- 
pose with  that  of  philosophy  and  religion, 
and  his  belief  in  the  sacred  character  of  the 
true  poet  or  man  of  letters,  are  repeated  in 
Heroes  and  Hero-Worship  and  elsewhere 
throughout  his  later  writings.*""] 

The  early  biographical  studies  are  of 
great  value,  not  only  because  of  their 
intrinsic  merit,  but  because  they  make  clear 
to  us  the  theory  of  biographical  writing 
which  he  faithfully  practised  from  this  time 
on.  That  the  true  biography  should  set 
forth  the  ideal  based  upon  and  growing  out 


124  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

of  the  actual,  that  the  external  facts  of 
history  should  be  treated  merely  as  the 
manifestation  of  an  unseen,  spiritual  life, 
and  that  these  facts  should  be  used  so  far  as 
possible  to  furnish  warning  or  help  and 
inspiration  for  the  life  of  our  own  perplexing 
age,  are  the  most  important  convictions 
illustrated  and  expounded  in  the  early  books 
and  essays. 

A  further  application  of  Carlyle's  central 
philosophy  becomes  manifest  in  an  analysis 
of  his  specific  criticisms  of  his  own  age. 
The  appeal  for  a  more  widespread  cultiva- 
»  tion  of  the  dynamical  and  unconscious  part 
of  our  nature  was  made  to  England  in  a 
critical  and  troubled  period  of  her  history, 
and  is  to  be  understood  as  the  reaction  of  a 
spiritual  philosopher  against  the  growing 
materialism  of  a  mechanical  age. 

Sartor  Resartus  is  to  be  regarded  as  the 
culmination  of  all  his  earlier  work.  Under 
the  opposing  categories  of  Transcendental- 
ism and  Descendentalism  he  marshaled  all 
the  philosophical  ideas  which  he  had  pre- 
viously advocated  and  combatted.  In  the 
second  book  of  that  work  he  outlined 
./  the  ideal  spiritual  biography,  and  in  the 


CONCLUSION  125 

third  he  included,  in  such  chapters  as 
Helotage,  Natural  Super  naturalism  and 
Church  Clothes,  his  most  profound^criti- 
cisms  of  society  and  religion. 

In  working  with  the  materials  of  the 
present  study,  the  author  has  become  more 
than  ever  impressed  with  Carlyle's  sense  of 
the  sacredness  of  his  calling.  He  worked 
ever  in  the  consciousness  that  the  eye  of  his 
great  Taskmaster  was  upon  him. 

Here  eyes  do  regard  you, 
In  Eternity's  stillness; 
Here  is  all  fulness, 
Ye  brave,  to  reward  you; 
Work,  and  despair  not. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

The  chief  materials  for  the  present  study 
are  the  works  of  Carlyle  written  between 
1823  and  1831,  and  the  early  letters.  Those 
made  use  of,  with  their  dates  of  publication, 
are: 

WORKS  . 

1824.  Translation  of  Wilhelm  Meister. 

1825.  The  Life  of  Schiller. 

1826.  German  Romance. 

1827.  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter. 

1827.  The  State  of  German  Literature. 

1828.  Life  and  Writings  of  Werner. 
1828.     Goethe's  Helena. 

1828.  Goethe. 

1828.  Burns. 

1828.  Life  of  Heyne. 

1829.  German  Playwrights. 
1829.  Voltaire. 

1829.     Novalis. 

1829.  Signs  of  the  Times. 

1830.  On  History. 

1830.  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter. 

1831.  Luther's  Psalm. 
1831.     Schiller. 

1831.     The  Niebelungen  Lied. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE         127 

1831.  German  Literature  of  the  XIV.  and  XV. 
Centuries. 

1831.     Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry. 

1831.     Characteristics. 

1833-4.     Sartor  Resartus. 

1892.  Last  Words  of  Thomas  Carlyle  (con- 
tains Wotton  Reinfred). 

LETTERS 

Early  Letters,  1814-1826,  ed.  Norton,  New 
York,  1886. 

Letters,  1826-1836,  ed.  Norton,  New  York, 
1889. 

Correspondence  between  Goethe  and  Carlyle, 
ed.  Norton,  New  York,  1887. 

BIOGRAPHY,  CRITICISM,  ETC. 

Two  recent  books  of  especial  interest  in  the 
study  of  the  early  Carlyle  may  be  mentioned. 

CRAIG,  R.  S.  The  Making  of  Carlyle;  an 
experiment  in  biographical  explication.  Lon- 
don, 1908. 

ROWE,  F.  W.  Carlyle  as  a  Critic  of  Litera- 
ture. New  York,  1910. 

The  standard  lives  by  Froude,  Nicoll,  Gar- 
nett,  etc.,  have,  of  course,  been  consulted.  A 
study  of  the  periodical  writing  in  Great  Britain 


128  THOMAS  CARLYLE 

between  1825  and  1830  is  also  necessary  for  an 
adequate  appreciation  of  the  distinctive  quality 
of  Carlyle's  contribution  to  the  thought  of  his 
time.  For  the  historical  background  given  in 
Chapter  IV  the  following  has  been  used  as  chief 
authority : 

ROBINSON,  J.  H.  and  BEARD,  C.  A.  The 
Development  of  Modern  Europe.  New  York, 
1907. 


INDEX 

Adamson,  Professor 112 

Appearance,  the  world  an  29, 112 

Arnold,   Matthew    44,  97-98, 107 

Art    46, 54 

Athenaeum     90,  91 

Austin,  Mrs 16 

Baffometus    31 

Baphometic  Fire-Baptism   31 

Beers,  Professor   80 

Bentham 42 

Bible 24 

Bible-Society 95 

Biography,  see  Spiritual  Biography. 

Blackwood's  Magazine 89,  90 

Blessedness   120 

Blue  Flower,  The,  of  Novalis 79 

Blumine 74n 

Borrow  80 

Boswell 38, 81 

Brewster,  Dr.,  his  Encyclopedia 8 

Bulwer 80 

Burns,  34,  38,  39,  49,  56,  68-71;   Carlyle's  essay 

on,  14,  33,  39,  68. 
Byron     71,  93 

Cabanis    95 

Cant    60,  77, 122 

Carlyle,    Alexander    12, 19 

Carlyle,  Jane  Welsh    7,9,12,73 

Carlyle,  John 20 

Carlyle,  Margaret  1, 20 


130  INDEX 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  intensity,  1;  an  eclectic,  3; 
earnestness,  5;  interest  in  mathematics,  5; 
turns  to  Philosophy,  6;  to  German  literature, 
6;  early  literary  projects,  6-8;  writings  1823- 
1826,  8-9;  marriage,  9;  period  of  doubt,  9; 
interest  in  social  problems,  10;  egoism,  11; 
growing  power  of  expression,  13;  life  at 
Edinburgh,  13;  at  Craigenputtock,  14;  writ- 
ings 1826-1831,  14;  gets  disciples,  15;  a 
mystic,  16;  spiritual  condition  in  1827,  18; 
philosophy,  22-44;  a  Calvinist,  52;  absorbing 
interest  in  religion  and  conduct,  52;  culture, 
52;  attitude  toward  social  problems,  107-108; 
compared  with  Swift,  112. 

Catholic   question    16, 87 

Cervantes    34, 101 

Characteristics     14,  36,  88,  99-105,  106, 113 

Chartism    11,  88 

Chartist   Movement    88 

Christian  Examiner  113n 

Christianity    23, 32, 42-44, 123 

Church    29,  51 

Church  Clothes    125 

Civil  Wars,  Carlyle's  essay  on  6 

Clothes-philosophy    Ill 

Coleridge   30,  77,  93 

Consciousness    36,  99-105,  111,  124 

Corn  Law  88 

Crabbe    93 

Craigenputtock    14, 16 

Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays 14,  66, 122 

Croker,  his  edition  of  Boswell's  Johnson 38 

Cromwell   81 

Cruthers  and  Johnson  72n 


INDEX  131 

Dalbrook   30 

Dante      1,  74, 101-102 

Deists   . .  .94 

Denial 72,  74, 119 

Descendentalism 111-120, 124 

Dichtung  und  Wahrheit 68 

Dickens,  his  David  Copper  field 80 

Diderot 94 

Dilettanteism 20 

Diogenes,  see  Teufelsdrockh. 

Divine  Idea 2, 38, 39, 47, 49, 50 

Duty    120 

Dynamics     2, 17,  86, 103,  111,  124 

Early  German  Literature   46 

Edinburgh  A  ddress    43 

Emerson    80,  97, 98n,  lOln,  107 

Encyclopedists     94 

Epicurus    74,  76 

Everlasting  No 73, 119 

Faust    18,  72,  73 

Fichte     4, 6, 27, 112, 113, 114 

Forms 41 

Prater's  Magazine 15,  72,  93 

Frederick  the  Great , 106 

French  Revolution,  79,  87,  116;  Carlyle's  History 

of,  92, 122. 
Frothingham,  N.  L 113n 

German  literature 6, 27, 28, 49, 51,  63, 82,  83,  94 

German  novelists    65,  66 

German   philosophy,  see  Transcendentalism. 

German  playwrights    49, 57 

German  Romance 8,  62-66,83 


132  INDEX 

Germany,  Mme.  de  Stael's    6 

Goethe,  4,  8,  18,  19,  27,  28,  37,  45,  49,  50,  56,  61, 
62-68,  70,  71,  78-80,  83,  112,  113;  Carlyle's 
essay  on,  14,  43,  46,  58,  66-68,  81 ;  his  Helena, 
Carlyle's  essay  on,  72,  119. 

Gotz  von  Berlichingen   64,  68 

Gordon,  Margaret    73 

Happiness    19-20,  32-37,  69,  77, 120 

Helotage    125 

Heroes  and  Hero-worship   123 

Hero-worship    38,  76, 82, 122 

Heuschrecke   119 

Heyne     57 

History,  54;  essay  on,  14,  85. 

Hoffman 66 

Hume     6, 23 

Humility     19,  43,  44 

Ideal     49,  54-55,  57,  59,  70, 123 

Immanence  of  God    123 

Immortality    33,  60 

Inglis,  Henry,  letter  to 21 

Intuition     26, 51, 101,;i04 

Job,  book  of 24 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  56;  life  of,  38,  81. 

Journal,  Carlyle's 17, 45 

Kant     6, 22,  24,  25,  26,  28,  41,  61, 76,  94, 104 

Keats    93 

Latterday  Pamphlets    85 

Lear,  King  116 

Literary  criticism  45 

Literary  historian    50 


INDEX  133 

Literary  men    48,  51 

Literature     51,  60 

Locke    23, 34,  83 

Lowell,  J.  R 80,85 

Luddite   Riots   88 

McMechan,  editor  of  Sartor  Resartus  74n 

Masson,  Life  of  Chatterton  86 

Materialism    3, 23, 83, 94, 124 

Mathematics    5,  74 

Mechanism    . . . 85-86,  91-92,  94-99, 102-103, 108,  111,  124 
Men  of  Letters,  see  Literary  Men. 

Mephistopheles     72, 114,  119 

Metaphysics     100-101 

Mill,   J.   S 16 

Milton    1,  34,  61 

Mitchell,  Robert,  of  Linlithgow  4 

Model  Prisons   106 

Montagu,  Jane   73-75 

Morris,  William 47 

Musset,  Alfred  de 79 

Mysticism    16, 25,  84 

Natural  Supernaturalism  40,  77n,  125 

Necessity    34 

New  England  Transcendentalism   85 

Newspapers    51 

Novalis,  4,  40,  56,  79,  83,  94,  113;  essay  on,  14, 
28-29,  84-85. 

Open   secret    31 

Paley     42 

Pantheism   39 

Past  and  Present   11,  85, 88 

Peterloo  massacre  .  . .  88 


134  INDEX 

Philistine   66n 

Philosophes  44 

Philosophy   6, 22-44,  74 

Phoenix    41 

Phosphoros     31 

Plato     ..  .24 

Poet      40, 48,  69, 100, 123 

Poetry,    40,  45-53,  54,  84,  93,  96, 104, 123 

Primitive   Truth    26 

Quarterly    Review    88-90,  95n 

Reason    26-29,  41-42, 49, 104,  111,  114 

Reform  Bill   16, 8T 

Religion     39-44,  84 

Reminiscences     113 

Renunciation    19,  77, 120, 122 

Resignation     19, 37, 112 

Revelation     42 

Reverence     37-38,  44,  65,  70, 122 

Reverences,  The  Three   43 

Richter,  24,  28,  41,  57,  66,  83,  84,  94,  113;  essays 
on,  14,  24. 

Robbers,  The   60 

Rousseau     79,  94 

Ruskin     12,  70,  97, 107 

St.  Simonians     16,  85 

Sanctuary  of  Sorrow  43 

Sansculottism     112, 116 

Sartor  Resartus,  4,  8,  14,  15,  17,  29,  32,  33,  34, 

41,  43,  45,  67,  71,  72,  73,  74n,  75,  77n,  78,  80, 

81,  86,  88,  104,  109-121,  122,  124. 

ScheUing    6 

Schiller,  6,  28,  56,  59-62,  65,  71,  79,  83;  life  of, 

8,  22,  52,  58-61,  106;  essay  on,  14,  34,  61-62. 


INDEX  135 

Schleiermacher     33 

Scientific  advance   93 

Scott     93 

Self-annihilation    37 

Self-denial     19, 32,  34,  44,  69 

Shakespeare    61,  62, 101, 102 

Shelley     93 

Shooting  Niagara;  and  After?   87n 

Signs  of  the   Times   14,16,85-99,106,107 

Silence     104 

Sincerity     37-39, 82, 122 

Social  Idea   29 

Socrates     36 

Southey    93 

Space  and  Time   28 

Spiritual  biography    2,  54-81, 110, 123, 124 

Stael,  Mme.  de   6 

State  of  German  Literature,  The  14,  25, 46, 83 

Stephen,  Leslie    30 

Stewart,    Dugald    6, 23 

Stoic  philosophy   6, 32 

Stoddard,  F.  H.,  Evolution  of  the  English  Novel,  79n 
Swift     111-114, 116 

Tale  of  a  Tub  Ill 

Teaching  function  of  poetry   45-46 

Tell,    Wilhelm    60 

Test  Act   87 

Teufelsdrockh     17, 74,  78-79,  111,  113, 117 

Tieck    4, 40 

Times,  the   82-108 

Tolstoi    108 

Transcendentalism   2, 22-28, 30, 32, 41-42,  61,  82,  85, 

101, 104, 110, 111-120, 122, 124. 
Truth,     30,  38, 46,  60,  70,  84 


136  INDEX 

Unconsciousness,  see  Consciousness. 

Understanding    ...26,  27,  29,  41-42,  72, 104,  111,  114, 119 

Utilitarianism    44,  66n 

Vernunft   26 

Verstand   26 

Voltaire,     3,  6,  27,  37,  38,  42,  49,  56,  65,  69-71,  83,  94 ; 
essay  on,  14. 

Wallenstein     60 

Walter,  Captain    75 

Weissnicht-wo 66 

Welsh,  Jane,  see  Carlyle,  Jane  Welsh. 

Werner,   31-32,  57 ;  essay  on,  31, 41 

Werther  64,  68,  78 

Whittier     80 

Wilhelm  Meister   8,  43,  62-63,  68,  78 

Wordsworth    47 

Work    36,  76, 122 

Wotton  Reinfred 5,  8, 14,  30,  35,  72,  73-80 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DTT 
STAMP. 


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WILL   BE  ASr 
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